From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.
Today I'll be reviewing the movie Tank Girl released in 1995.
Starring:
Lori Petty, Ice-T, Naomi Watts
Directed by:
Rachel Talalay
Genre:
Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:
R
Budget:
$25,000,000 (estimated)
Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:
5.3
The Synopsis is:
A girl is among the few survivors of a dystopian Earth. Riding a war tank, she fights against the tyranny of a mega-corporation that dominates the remaining water supply of the planet.
Story:
Tank Girl is a British comic book created by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin which premiered in the debut issue of UK magazine, Deadline in 1988.
The titular character drives a tank, which is also her home as she escapes authorities with her boyfriend, Booga, a mutant kangaroo. It borrows heavily from punk culture that began in the 70’s and embraced non conformity.
Dark Horse Comics brought the comic to the U.S. in 1991.
Tank Girl comics never got to be a very popular property in the US, but I know for myself personally just seeing the comic I loved the spirit of the character and the theme of her brutal world. As her fandom kept growing sooner or later a movie had to become a thing.
When John Calley became president of MGM/UA in 1993, he immediately snapped up the rights to Tank Girl for $25,000. As well, at some point James Cameron considered directing the film. I wonder how that would have turned out.
Rachel Talalay is a director who had previously worked with John Waters in Polyester in 1981 and Cry Baby in 1990. She has the DNA to create an off kilter cult classic. She also worked in some capacity on all of the Nightmare on Elm Street before directing Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare in 1991.
She was introduced to Tank Girl when her stepdaughter gave her a book as a Christmas present while she was shooting Freddy’s Dead. Rachel Talalay pitched the film to Amblin Entertainment and Columbia Pictures, who both turned it down until MGM / United Artist agreed to give her the green light.
The story aspect of the film is where it gets its strongest criticisms from the public and that is because the story has a very random series of events that occur, not always related to the plot.
The story definitely has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Is that all you need for a good story? Absolutely not, but those are just the bones, and Tank Girl has great bones. However, the lack of story detail was completely in line with the comic book soaking with rebellious chaos. It rebels against the norm in tone and against the high structure of a serious dramatic story. Instead, it’s focused on spontaneity, twisted humor, and offensiveness much like a mature Looney Tunes live action adventure.
Pacing:
At 1 hour and 44 minutes, the pacing is very uneven and fast. You really have to pay attention to keep up with the adventure or important details will be lost. Even when it slows down, it just ramps back up to 1000 in a flash.
Challenge:
The big baddie in this film is Kesslee who is the leader of the corporation, WP or Water and Power that controls the water in the world in the year 2033. He’s a control freak who kills his top man just because there was still a small section of land that is not in his control.
What a waste, but I guess it was all in service of intimidating his men to work harder.
He doesn’t make much sense with that move, but he makes up for it. Kesslee has been losing territories because of a band of dangerous outlaws called the Rippers. He becomes interested in Tank Girl because he thinks she is the key to changing his luck since she takes down 8 of his company militia. He has a genius master plan to get rid of the Rippers through Tank Girl.
He’s a marvelously outlandish villain that wants to win at all cost and every time he is on screen, he gives the audience a show.
Empathy:
At the surface Tank Girl is a female post-apocalyptic Bugs Bunny with a pension for performing bad haircuts on herself without a mirror. Many critics call her annoying much like a laughing hyena without much depth to her character so you don’t actually care about what happens to her.
But I am one of those people… yep, one of those people, who believe that Tank Girl is a wonderful character with a great deal of nuance.
Even if you don’t read about her background from the comics. The world that is set up in the beginning is a dystopian nightmare. The world was destroyed by a comet and it hasn’t rained in 11 years.
Water and Power are savagely treating their citizens who may also be their consumers too. There is no security and it's pretty much a war zone, each man for himself.
I really take in consideration that this character had a traumatizing childhood forged in uncertainty, violence, abuse and oppression. I am assuming this but I think she is acting the way that she is acting because she may be suffering through a stress disorder. She’s suicidal, willing to get into dangerous situations without fear or concern, but she also has a fail-safe of surviving through a combination of luck, instincts, skill, and ridiculous courage. In the process, she gets hurt and she doesn’t dwell in the darkness of it, she laughs in the face of it. And I love that she gets hurt and isn’t all powerful. I just love this kind of spunk. I love that she is a fighter, something most people don’t have the courage to be.
Jet or Jet girl is Tank Girl’s partner in crime. She doesn’t have the same spunk, which is kind of a nice offset to Tank Girl’s antics. Most of her scenes are spent being drooled over by the guys around her and it almost seems as if she wants to be invisible. Eventually she comes out of her shell a bit and actually has an arc as she stands up for herself by the end.
The Rippers are pretty cool. They were created by a scientist by the name of Johnny Prophet as a military weapon. They have been attacking Water and Power facilities ever since Johny Prophet disappeared. Each Ripper has a unique personality because they were all reincarnations of humans except Booga who is part dog. He’s so adorable. I enjoyed the relationship that blossoms between Booga and Tank Girl, which is completely odd because they aren’t even of the same species, but what shines through is how they can find some tenderness amid their circumstances.
Technical:
Filming started in June of 1994 and was completed over sixteen weeks later utilizing 3 in three locations: White Sands, New Mexico, Phoenix, Arizona, and Tucson, Arizona.
There were so many unique hairstyle changes.
Graphically ironic and disturbing
All of the fashion that mainstream fashion uses as trends like safety pins, ripped features, holes in stocking, and combining mixed-matched colors.
Tank Girl changes in and out of about 18 different outfits and hairstyles throughout the film which were mostly all fun and grungy, kinda perfect for the alternative vibe of the 1990’s. I almost wished it went a little more hardcore punk. However, it was still really cool, I love the clothes from the 1990’s.
Rippers were originally sentient kangaroos. Rachel Talalay wanted them to look more human-like so she asked Jamie Hewlett to redesign them for the film. Stan Winston saw the opportunity to do these characters and was so excited that the work was done for half price to meet the budget.
I absolutely loved the Rippers and how each one had such unique features to go with their personalities. They had remote control articulated ears, snouts and tails to help the actors look realistic in their prosthetics and makeup. Each actor needed 4 hours to get into their costumes and makeup and I thought that they were wonderfully done.
The score by Graeme Revell was minimal. The highlight in the music in the film is the unique soundtrack assembled by Courtney Love. A few standouts in the film was "Wild, Wild, Thing" by Iggy Pop, who also makes a cameo, "Big Gun" performed by Ice-T who also plays one of the Rippers in the film, a duet of "Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love" with Joan Jett and Paul Westerberg from the Replacements, Devo "Girl U Want", Björk's song "Army of Me", and a personal favorite of mine is "Roads" by Portishead.
They even slide in a snippet of the "Theme from Shaft" by Isaac Hayes.
Performances:
MGM held open casting sessions in London, Los Angeles, and New York for the role of Tank Girl as a publicity stunt which resulted in hiring actress, Emily Lloyd.
Lori Petty auditioned for Tank Girl twice and had even told her friends that she was going to be in the film even though the role went to someone else. Emily Lloyd refused to cut her hair for the part and in stepped Lori Petty to snatch up the role. She naturally falls so inline with the rebellious spirit of the character. I just love what she was able to impart on the character, her voice and her heart. Lori was able to take this wild character in comic books and show us how she could be real.
Naomi Watts has expressed how little she likes the film, which makes sense because she is most notably in many dramas and her hair is usually blonde. This was a little outside her wheelhouse, however she was fantastic in this. Rumor has it that she auditioned 9 times and this was her first big budget production so she was frightened and kept hiding behind Lori Petty.
She has never confirmed or denied this but it was said that Lori Petti and Rachel Talalay worked together to bring her out of her shyness. You really see this by the end of the film where it shows a very bold transformation of her character giving us the only arch in the film. Go Jet Girl!
Malcolm McDowell was so much fun as Kesslee. I always love seeing him in these villain role because he has this sly little smile that is such a surprise. He really plays it up in this film and I just love it!
Wish List:
I wish that the film was not so much of an origin story of how she got the tank. It actually takes about 41 minutes into the film to get the tank, and I wish that had been at the start.
She’s been compared to the Joker’s girlfriend or ex-girlfriend depending on the timing, Harley Quinn. I totally see the resemblance. So many people love Harley Quinn but complained that they disliked Tank Girl and I think that the reason why is because we didn’t get a serious backstory of what the past 11 years were like for Tank Girl to give us a reason why she acts the way that she does. Harley Quinn’s background is fully explained in her lore be it the movies, TV or comic books. And this is what’s crucially missing for Tank Girl so we can understand that her personality is from a stress disorder, or her childhood, or maybe a combination of both. I really think she could have used a Gremlins 1984 Phoebe Cates monologue in the mix to just give us a sense of what horrors she covers up with black humor.
And a little backstory or motivation for Kesslee would have been good too. Is he doing this for revenge against Johnny Prophet or some traumatizing past.
I also feel that the movie had a lot about Jet Girl and the film could be called The Adventure of Tank Girl and Jet Girl. I wish we had more Tank Girl in her own movie.
In many ways this feels like a soft origin story that wraps up and kills off the bad guy so end of story. I wish this had the potential to continue, and maybe there is still a way around that with a sequel.
Which leads to my next wish, which is, I wish this was completely done as an animation, or at least matched the bright colors of a vivacious fantasy seen in the animation in the film. The cinematography is great, but the colors are very much in line with the color scheme of films done in the 1990’s where colors are muted or a cold blue tint. But can you imagine a series of mature themed animated movies or shows voiced by Lori Petty as Tank Girl. Please somebody do this!
Enjoyment:
After several positive test screenings the studio heads thought they "have a hit on their hands." MGM demanded drastic changes, took the movie away from Rachel Talalay and gave it to the marketing department to edit the film removing about an hour of footage. That is truly sad and can we just get a “release the Talalay cut” hashtag going. It’s hard to judge this film as Talalay’s vision when it was taken away from her. The interference didn’t help matters and the film failed at the box office.
When I saw the film for the first time, I was in love with the character of Tank Girl played by Lori Petty. There is a feminist edge to her, but she’s not trying to be feminist, she’s just a wacky rude jokester with a can do attitude.
What’s really interesting is that there is a cross reference of highjinx and sarcastic black humor that I found to be utterly entertaining and even admirable in the character and the series of events that happen in the film. Some of the things that she says to Kesslee is the kind of thing I would have loved to say to a few real life bad people I’ve encountered. Tank Girl is proud to be offensive and I wouldn’t have her any other way.
My Rating:
8
That sums up my review. I hope you liked it. This is Retro Nerd Girl signing off!
Take care movie lovers! I'm off to the next review!
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