Tales of the Incredible Hoke Robertson

MOVIE REVIEW

Noah

Okay, there have been a lot of complaints about my movie reviews, especially the review of All is Lost starring Robert Redford. For the record, I never actually stated that Redford roomed with Joseph Stalin during college or that either one of them ate small children every May 1st. Stalin was in fact a Vegan. Later historians can resolve the debate.

Let us turn instead to “Noah” the $160M epic of a man, a boat and lots of manure. Two things summarize this movie: one; if they spent $160M on this movie then someone needs to find, frisk and fire the accountant. Although there were some (not so) special effects sprinkled throughout, they were nowhere near that amount and obviously some idiot at Industrial Light and Magic misplaced a decimal point in filling out the invoice. Seriously, it was about $40M at most, so someone got overpaid or someone stole a whole lot of shaeckles (can’t find the word in Spelchuck). [That was another joke for those of you not paying attention.]

Two, Darren Aronofsky, the director of the movie must be a Russian sleeper agent charged with destroying our civilization from within. Whether this is true or not, he is beyond a doubt one bad director, incapable of putting together a coherent story line or making a bad story line flow. More on that later.

We all heard about the pre-release furor about Noah, and how many people of faith were either afraid it would not be true to the Bible or how it was anti-religion. The verdict is now in; the story is nowhere near consistent with the Bible, but it is not so much anti-religion as it is mind-staggeringly awful. This move is bad. It is not mildly bad as in say a rash is bad or a sliver is bad. Is it bad as in bubonic plague or severed limb. Apparently in order to write a movie screenplay you must; (i) be uneducated, (ii) have no knowledge of science or culture, and (iii) stay up late at night worried that the 0.0000027 atmospheric carbon contribution of the human race is killing bunny rabbits and condemning our children’s children to a life similar to the victims in the movie Road Warrior (by the way a classic set of films until some idiot screenplay writer thought it was a good idea to add Tina Turner as a bad ass gang leader; although she did utter a classic movie line “Thunderdome; two go in one comes out.”) I seem to be rambling; sorry.

Anyway the incredibly stupid (insane?) idea of Mr. Aronofsky (gee I wonder if he is from somewhere near Smolensk if you know what I mean) is to have God (called the Creator because it is against the law in Beverly Hills to mention religion) decide to kill all mankind because our pre-bronze age human culture built an industrial society that ruined the planet, creating a vast desert wasteland where even a Prius cannot travel. Yes, our pre-BRONZE AGE ancestors had industry that polluted the earth, destroyed most of the innocent animals and de-forested the planet. The idea probably came from a casual conversation between Ed Asner and Erin Brockovitch just after they finished discussing hair plugs and faltering name recognition.

Now, one cannot begin to describe just how inane this premise is. Of course in making any historical movie there has to be some license granted to make some changes or alter the story a bit. The Noah story is about a ten minute retell if you go by the Genesis text and ten minute movies do not sell many tickets. It’s one thing to say, add dialog that of course there is no basis for and quite another to have Noah using a cell phone or an FN/FAL assault rifle. Now the movie did not have cell phones or assault rifles, but the point is that the Genesis story fully explained WHY God wanted to start over and the reason was NOT industrial pollution. The Genesis story pre-dates the sturdy inhabitants of Ur and Akkad carving a civilization out of the fertile plains of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. They used mud bricks, sticks and shiny dirt to begin dragging mankind from Stone-Age wanderings to building cities with unsafe hovels and no sewer systems; you know like Stockton or Bakersfield. At that time there were about 243 people in the Fertile Crescent, another 50 in Asian and maybe 10 more in Europe and Africa. At best they could have ruined only a small section of stream or two by peeing upstream of the swimming hole (which incidentally is why they drank beer; fermented and thus healthier; fact you ignorant non-historians).

Anyway, God had plenty of reasons to wipe out most all of mankind, and although he could look into the future and see that we would eventually throw plastic bags onto the freeway and shoot squirrels just for the fun of it, THOSE were not why he drowned everyone.

Okay, you get the premise of the movie which was presented to us along with some intro graphics that cost about $27. Our wonderful story opens with our young lad Noah out with his father enjoying soiled, itchy clothing when a band of motorcycle thugs find and kill ol’ Lemach (dad) or whatever he was called. Here we find the first mistake in the story as Noah was like 573 (really for you atheist bastards) when he built the ark. Somehow he meets this same head motorcycle gang leader when he is 7 and again when he is 573; it don’t work. Anyway, the poor father is killed before he can use the magical snake skin (from the Garden of Eden snake no less) to pass some magical power or properties onto little Noah. Hmmm, one does not need to be a Bible scholar to question this magical snake skin thing. However it returns at the end of our story like Anthony Weiner on your daughter’s Facebook page. “Magical snakeskin;” kinda rolls off the tongue like “corporate bigwigs” or “ignorant Tea Party.”

Flash forward 563 years and Noah is now a man with his children; Shem, Ham, Curly Joe and the Beav. Our heroes are gathering dirt to eat later with Mom and one of them cruelly picks a flower off of a hypericum perforatum (or wort) that is struggling to survive on the rocky desolation of the earth man has destroyed. You can almost hear the little herb scream in agony as the uncaring stooge plucks its one chance at children. Noah, ever vigilant apparently heard the soft ooze of xylem bleeding out and admonishes the Beaver to only kill these wondrous plants to survive; not for enjoyment. This theme is repeated in the film; we can only destroy the earth by small steps, big ones are bad. Besides, who could possibly eat one more tiny bloom after a full repast of dirt and rocks?

Now we get to the good part. Noah must fight the (very same) motorcycle gang members as they pursue him and his sons in order to steal their dirt for dinner. Our hero, dominatingly played by Russell Crowe, everyone’s favorite, is forced to face the fiends to defend his family. Apparently, the Israeli martial art of Krav Maga predates even Wing Chun Gung Fu, as Noah handily disposes of about 40 bad guys. Whoda thunk? Perhaps the hand of the Creator was involved. At this point Darren “Windmills are Cool” Aonofsky introduces us to another previously unknown Bible fact: in pre-flood times the ground was littered with some sort of magical rocks that glowed and when struck, start fires. This is necessary so Noah and Debbie (I think that was his wife’s name) can have cookfires without wood, the gang leader can shoot a signal flare out of a piece of bamboo (don’t ask), Noah can thwart his son’s effort to sail away from the ark (don’t ask again) and we can explain how industry grew and destroyed the world. The movie gave these magical rocks a name but I cannot remember it so I’ll call them Bic lighters, although at one point I thought I saw a BP Oil logo on one.

I may have missed a good portion of the film as I tried and tried to understand the Bic lighter thing. To no avail. Remember when I said they didn’t actually use cell phones or assault rifles? Well, the Bic lighter thing may put that to the test. Savor that for a moment; in the telling of the Biblical Noah story we introduce glowing rocks that can start fires. Glowing rocks ….. Glowing rocks. Yes, glowing rocks that can start fires. At that very moment in the film tiny glands in my stomach began to uncontrollably produce digestive acid. Glowing rocks. Not shiny mind you, but interior lit, light throbbing rocks.

Anyway, Noah has a dream about being underwater. Jehovah spoke to Charlton Heston with a deep, powerful but kind voice, but the Creator only makes Russell Crowe dream of being underwater. Perhaps Heston’s strong NRA support entitled him to some respect while Crowe’s assumed leftist leanings gave the Creator disdain; we will probably never know. Noah does not know what this means, but needs to take a longer than normal pee in the morning. Slowly it dawns on him that there is going to be a flood and the Creator wants him to visit his grampy Methuselah; yes that Methuselah who is the only person to live longer than Moses. Ol’ Meth (not because his teeth are rotten but because writing his full name taxes my typing abilities) lives in a mountain cave and apparently eats rocks and HAS TEA. You know, tea leaves from Asia, which fortuitously blew over the Arabian Sea so Meth could figure out to put them in boiling water 3,000 years before anyone else thought of it. TEA. They drink TEA. Ol Meth has a teapot and drinks and serves TEA. Why not just have him serving Nachos or BLT’s? TEA. Glowing rocks of course allow him to have a fire for hundreds of years in his rock-strewn, but empty cave.

Well, it gets worse. Ol Meth isn’t much help at all except he does give Noah a seed he has, which seed comes from, …. Wait for it …. The Garden of Eden. Apparently, when Adam and Eve were cast out of paradise Eve must have had a burr stuck in her unkempt hair and that burr was passed down for the seven generations to Ol Meth who kept it until the time was ripe. Now that the Earth is devoid of any plant taller than one inch, the time is right.

Noah digs a hole in the volcanic ash (don’t ask) and plants the seed on the side of the barren hill. Guess what? The seed causes a spring to start flowing in all four compass directions (still trying to figure that one out) and then Presti-diga-flora! A thousand acres of lush forest springs up ala the Garden of Eden but without the nasty rules of God in play; sorry the Creator. Why one seed magically creates hundreds of plant species to grow to maturity in 27 seconds is a poser. Footnote; no such magic seeds were mentioned in Genesis.

Now before we get to the meat of the story. I need to go back a bit and add something. This is REALLY good so pay attention. Put down the damn Candy Crush game for a second and enjoy this. In the Bible there is a part that describes fallen angels who are on earth and in violation of God’s rules mate with humans which mating produces a race of giants. Most Biblical scholars and literalists tend to avoid this screwy portion of the Good Book, but nonetheless it is there. In Darren “Marbles taste funny” Aronofsky’s Noah, these fallen angels are the giants and they are rock people. Remember when Hellboy finally got close to finding the Golden Army in a cave in Scotland and he had to get by a giant rock creature? Well picture a bunch of these rock creatures, somewhat smaller and with bad complexions and poor postures. Why you ask are there rock creatures now inserted into the Noah story? Why is Harry Reid majority leader of the Senate? Why is Barbara Streisand bothered by our use of dryers? Why do young women cut me off in traffic each day? Why is Barack Obama considered smart? Some things cannot be explained.

Magical snake skins. Glowing rocks. Tea. Giant Rock creatures. History will record these parts of the story and who knows maybe someday little children will look to the heavens with awe dreaming of Bic lighters, rock giants and thirst for a drink not yet discovered.

Anyway, I also forgot to mention that when fleeing the motorcycle gang Noah and his family find a small girl whose family has recently been killed by said gang. Although grimy and scared, she knows that picking small flowers is a no-no and is wearing a GreenPeace t-shirt, so she is adopted by our Biblical A-Team. The dirty girl grows up to be the slightly smudged Emma Watson of Harry Potter fame. For a moment I thought Darren “Is This Milk Free of Growth Hormones” Aronofsky was going to have her pull out her wand and intone “Igneous-Levi-oh-SAH” but that part must have been edited out. Anyway, Emma is cute and does her best to fit her English accent in with the melange of other accents in the movie. Of course, our saucy little witch sets the internal Bic lighter of Shem on maximum.

Okay, back to our story. With this new, wonderful forest surrounding us, and with our new friends the rock creatures, Noah and the rest of our hearty Amonites set about slaughtering all the recently restored trees and building an ark. Not sure why they call it an ark, perhaps the term Guided Missile Cruiser was taken. Amazingly, the ark building activities include making/having thousands of yards of diaphanous cloth to give each (soon to arrive) animal a slice of privacy when occupying each’s little cage or corner. There are of course no sheep, goats, llamas or flax in the Noah clan, but somehow Debbie and Emma (called LeeLu or Multi-Pass or something else unintelligible) must have woven a thousand miles of cloth. Ark building is no small thing, and so Noah must shave his head and grow a beard (two seemingly contrary actions), but it does give him a certain savoir faire to go along with his swagger. To digress a minute, Russell Crowe, everyone’s favorite, has a weird sorta shape now. He kinda has the outline of say, Rosie O’Donnel after a clam bake. Unlike Matthew McConaughey (sp?) who lost 50 pounds to look sick in his last movie, Russell apparently thought he would double his Twinky intake to play Noah. He is cinched pretty tight in his pre-bronze-age jerkin, but I have to admit the swagger now leans more towards a waddle. Too bad really.

Anyway, the ark is built, tar (don’t ask) seals the gaps, food is gathered and the rock creatures grumble about unionization. It would be too simple and near sacrilegious to make fun of the “ALL the animals” coming to and being on the ark. How some slug from South America got to Mesopotamia or how a flightless rhea from Australia trotted into our new forest is just one of those interpretation or leap of faith things. I will say that I am a bit confused at how these huge groups of animals were fed along the way. Did not any lion or puma decide to eat one of the two white-tail deer making the trek? Did more than one pair of each start the journey in case some drunken Texan ran over an armadillo during the long march? If more than one pair started, how did Noah break it to the others that “sorry, already got two pandas, you’re going to drown.” Troublesome things to chew on.

Well, its been, say, ten minutes of film hand we haven’t introduced anything really stupid, so Darren “Probiotics Changeed My Life” Aronofsky now shows us how Debbie can put a larch leaf into an incense pot (ignited with a Bic lighter) and get a smoke that puts all the animals to sleep, thus solving the “how do I feed all these bastards during the voyage?” question. Like dedicated Buddhist monks, our stalwart sailors walk up and down the aisles of grumbling goats and surly serpents waving their incense pots and gently putting them all to sleep. Thus, the Noah story once again introduces some lame, magical solution to the ageless story. Like the patrons of a Hong Kong Opium Den of the 1800’s, the animals slip silently into drugged out bliss. If only we could have thought ahead and done this to the motorcycle gang out there lusting after our ark; but I get ahead of myself.

The motorcycle gang is out there lusting after our ark. The sudden creation of a thousand acres of forest in the desolation went un-noticed by the gang, but when swarms of birds swirled in the air before dive-bombing into the ark their interest was piqued! At first, only the local motorcycle club threatened our arkonauts, but when they saw we also had GIANT ROCK CREATURES, they decided to round up the entire national organization. Preparing to assault our arkies, they begin smelting spears, swords and bamboo rocket launchers (really) using I fear their last supply of glowing rocks. They also place IRON bear traps (really) around the perimeter of the ark-enclave because … well, there is no reason for this but it becomes important in making sure that the Noah son not boinking Emma Watson (Ham) does not himself get a hot chick also. [Ignoring for the moment that the Bible tells us that Noah’s sons brought their wives along.]

Gee, who might get caught in the IRON bear trap … hmmmm, maybe, no, …… perhaps …. no. Oh yeah; Ham’s REALLY dirty but eco-friendly babe does get bear-trapped. Remember, this is 4000 BC and yet they have spring loaded IRON bear traps, not again invented for 5000 years.

Anyway, it starts to rain, the hordes of gang members (played by the local SEIU and Teamsters Union) attack the ark and the $160M battle begins. The giant ROCK CREATURES give a good accounting but are slowing wiped out notwithstanding THEY ARE MADE OF ROCK. When giant rock creatures are “killed” they return to their angelic phase and shoot up to heaven in a bolt of pure light like a North Korean Missile taunting a very weak US President. Suddenly the waters of the earth (read the Bible you atheists) also are added to the mix and the attacking horde is vanquished or at the very least cleaned up a bit. Noah, played with vigor by Russell Crowe, everyone’s favorite, pushed his family inside and remained outside to graciously kill the few gang members who make it to the ark’s foyer. Noah/Russell again shows how a couple of years in Gladiator school makes motorcycle gang members look like John Kerry, and they are quickly saved from a slow death by drowning. The main motorcycle gang leader, was given a name because Darren “Grass Are People Too” Aronofsky is able to Google “Bible names.” His name is Tubalcane. Now this is VERY funny to Masons as Tubalcane is, well how should I put it, a “secret” word in our ritual. You cannot repeat this or I will be killed. Thus, even in bad movies, Masons are slandered. Anyway, Old Tubal sneaks into the ark simply because it is the opposite of what the Bible tells us. Here he is nursed to health by none other than Ham, our horny, unsatisfied son who now hates Noah for leaving his mate-to-be in the IRON bear trap. THIS PART WAS NOT CONTRIVED AT ALL. Ham is some unknown, bad actor youth who spends the entire movie looking agape. Picture the face of the poor cat after Pepe Lepew finally catches her and you will get how Ham looks the entire movie. Bug-eyed, forelorn, and hopeless.

At this point in the screenplay’s development, the pizza delivery guy mistakenly lost the Idiot’s Guide to the Bible that Darren was using and so the “writers” had to wing it from there. Shem’s barren witch, er, wife (don’t ask) was made fertile by Ol Meth and is now pregnant. Sadly we were not shown this physical act which results in pregnancy. Noah, still trying to figure out what a dream about being underwater means, has decided God wants to kill all men, including our Riders of the Last Ark, again because we used glowing rocks to decimate Monarch butterflies and cause perch to choke. Luckily, our group can live out their lives but no female babies are allowed (Jehovah of course being a sexist). Oops, the “I got an itch” once-barren now prego Emma presents a problem. Problem? Solution. Kill the baby if it is a girl. And why not? Well this creates quite a stir in the mankind cave. Of course, we eventually have a showdown, Noah kills Marlon Brando, er Tubalcane, Ham returns to the fold, Emma has twins no less and Noah simply cannot bring himself to shove a knife into a newborn baby. What a wimp. This “failing” by Noah of course upsets him as in all likelihood this dooms the earth to someday having mosh pits, Mountain Dew and Bernie Sanders.

Well, the waters recede and the ark gets stuck on a mountain top. Everyone starts about the business of gathering wet grass for breakfast and repopulating the world, except Noah. You see, not killing the innocent baby girls eats at him. Since all the 7-11 and Liquor stores are now gone, we have a clever clip showing Noah’s hand grabbing a bunch of grapes from some vine that ripened while under 1,000 feet of water, thus allowing Knowa to get drunk. Yes, he was able to find the supplies to crush, strain, cook, ferment and bottle wine within a day of exiting the ark. By the way, his wine mugs look oddly similar to Klingon battle armor. This guy is good. Well, of course we have a scene where Noah finds the error of his ways, finally realizing that the decision to kill most or all of the human race was left to Noah, God being a bit ambivalent at this point, still wondering why the giant rock creature looked unhappy.

That is our story. Now let us return to Darren “What is this Camera-thingy” Aronofsky. As you might know, Darren, after divorcing Samantha because her mother Endora was always turning him into a dog became a film maker. SPOILER ALERT. I am alerting you to a spoiled movie. His last effort was “Black Swan” a truly horrible experience for the audience. In that movie, the acting-challenged Natalie Portman, anorexically played the lead role of a psychotic ballet dancer who goes crazy after having weird hallucinations including lesbian love-making. I will let you decide which portions of the movie were good and which were bad. At best only one scene might be considered “good.” It was a choppy, disjointed, unappealing movie that the dim-witted, Marxist Oscar voters always love. I assume this is because they are all high on drugs when they watch these nausea inducing movies. Such trashy filth almost always guarantees an Oscar nod for the deranged woman of the moment who has sold her soul for a revealing gown and cocaine habit. Anyway, after having watched Black Swan and Noah, it is clear that our immigration policies DO need changing, at the very least to deport Darren Aronofsky. Darren is to movie directing as projectile vomit is to fine cuisine. He is the darling of the Commie-bastard movie industry which thinks the good movies are the ones nobody sees or likes; the common man being incapable of appreciating “high culture.” In fact, Derwood is totally unable to put together a coherent thought much less movie. The Bible is the foundation of our western Judeo-Christian heritage whereas Aronofsky is the author of glowing fire-starting rocks, magical snake-skins, ex-angel rock creatures, 4000 BC tea pots and iron bear traps during the pre-Bronze Age. You should avoid seeing Noah unless it is the version with Claymation boy and his dog I used to watch on Sunday morning back in the ‘60’s.