#140RVW
Dreadful adaptation of great comic could only have been made in the 1990’s, and didn’t even work then. Unmitigated disaster of a film.
What’s more:
My sister turned me on to the Tank Girl comics by Jamie Hewlett & Alan Martin in the early 90’s. They were irreverent, totally unique, and I loved them instantly. This movie: kangaroo dung.
I don’t know what possessed United Artists to make this movie, aside from some wild assumption on their part that the “grrrrl” movement may put a few bums in seats. Massive miscalculation. I was in college when this came out and I can’t remember a single person going to this movie or even talking about it.
This thing only could have come out when it did. Riding a wave of edgy “youth” movies, the thing plays like a frenetic nightmare desperately screaming “Look at me! I’m being edgy!”
How bad is it?
- It fails the Malcolm McDowall test – that’s a deal-killer by itself.
- It fails the rocker test; Iggy Pop shows up. Granted, he’s Iggy, so you can’t tell him apart from all of the other freaks…
- It fails the rapper test; Ice-T not only “acts” but contributes a “song”. The fact that he is hidden under Stan Winston makeup I consider a mitigating circumstance. Unfortunately, the makeup is that of a mutated kangaroo with Caucasian skin grafts. Intensely disturbing.
- The set design proves that while $25 million dollars is a small budget, it’s still too much money if you don’t know what to do with it.
- Courtney Love was a music consultant…
- The story is a train wreck. I’m giving the benefit of the doubt to the filmmakers here, though, as they fought bitterly with the studio at every turn (and lost). While a great story wasn’t strictly necessary to making a cool, stylized movie of this type, the Mad Max one they ended up turning this into is the pits.
I actually think Lori Petty is pretty great in the titular role. She seems to get the character and does her part well. Pity she’s American. It’s painful to watch Naomi Watts in this. Bet this got left off a few resumes.
At the end of the day it was simply ill-advised making this movie. The comic is brilliant but was never going to translate no matter what you did. There’s really nothing salvageable here, but I do have an idea that could have at least saved them all some money. They should have cast Gwen Stefani as the lead and got some heat off of that. Actually, that may have been a little off, time-wise. No Doubt was white-hot in 1995 but probably too late for filming this. The idea holds, though; I would have hired any one of the Spice Girls (reportedly 3 of them were in contention for the role). The movie would have been no better (probably even worse) but the box office would have gotten a bump…
Poster:
Trailer:
Bechdel Test:
Yes
The Representation Test Score: B (9 pts)
(http://therepresentationproject.org/grading-hollywood-the-representation-test/)
| Main Cast | Lori Petty Tank Girl, Ice-T T-Saint, Naomi Watts Jet Girl, Don Harvey Sgt. Small |
| Rating | R |
| Release Date | Fri 31 Mar 1995 UTC |
| Director | Rachel Talalay |
| Genres | Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi |
| Plot | Based on the British cult comic-strip, our tank-riding anti-heroine fights a mega-corporation, which controls the world’s water supply. |
| Poster |  |
| Runtime | 104 |
| Tagline | In 2033, justice rides a tank and wears lip gloss |
| Writers | Alan Martin (comic strip) and, Jamie Hewlett (comic strip) … |
| Year | 1995 |