Subject: REVIEW: TANK GIRL

From: [email-masked] (Bryant Frazer)
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 22:26:29 GMT

TANK GIRL
		       A film review by Bryant Frazer
			Copyright 1995 Bryant Frazer

Directed by Rachel Talalay
U.S., 1995
 
     How disappointed can we be, really, that TANK GIRL doesn't live up
to the promise of its comic book origins?

     TANK GIRL the comic strip is a true brainstorm, a patchwork of
edgy drawings that combine and create a montage that belies the
scattershot narrative surface.  The British export creates its own
metasatirical planet, all the better to backlight the herky-jerky
antics of Our Hero, a cute, punkish loudmouth genuinely unlike any
other.  If you're a comics reader, imagine the doom-saying of a Frank
Miller opus getting wanked off by the low-level hijinks that give the
X-Men their wacky charm.  Mix in a whole lot of sexual innuendo, SF
style, and you're distilling eau d'Tank Girl.

     TANK GIRL the movie falls short on all those counts except the
wacky charm (Lori Petty exudes great sparkling dollops of wacky charm,
much to her credit).  At the beginning of the movie, we find the earth
has been all but completely dehydrated by a near-miss with a nasty
comet.  The overwhelming majority of the world's water is controlled by
the megacorporate Water & Power, with what's left over coveted by
mutant renegades and bootleggers.  Tank Girl's boyfriend (surrogate
husband) is killed and she and a child (surrogate daughter) are
captured in a raid on one of those bootleg compounds.  She breaks free
of Water & Power's clutches when they try to send her on a suicide
mission into mutant territory, but returns (with the help of fellow
ex-con Jet Girl) to rescue the kid.

     While director Rachel Talalay (previously responsible for the game
but forgettable FREDDY'S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE and GHOST IN THE
MACHINE) has a good eye for fun performances, she's not quite up to the
action drill (the stops-out MGM-style production of "Let's Do It" is
more like it).  Meanwhile, there's no sense of the low-tech grit that
permeates the original stories--this one's got lots of gloss and
sheen, even if the budget ain't exactly WATERWORLDesque.  While the
comic book is very good (not great), the movie is only middling.  What
went wrong?  Tank Girl got prettified by Hollywood (can't you just
imagine her disgust at that idea?).

     Gone is any sense of the character as vagabond--by foisting a
family off on the poor girl from the very beginning, the movie gives us
a lame justification for her motherly wanderlust.  By characterizing
the bad-ass "rippers" (kangaroo mutants ably crafted for the screen by
FX master Stan Winston) as a bunch of likable goofs, we're given
obligatory comic relief as well as a sense of injustice at their
plight.  And while Malcolm McDowell's evil tormentor is a perfect foil
for Tank Girl (straight outta central casting!), in the end there are a
few too many formulas and too few surprises.

     But what did you expect?  One reason comic books still enjoy a
reputation as an "underground" art form is that you can still find
books, like TANK GIRL, that fly in the face, surprise, and delight.
Tank Girl's brash immodesty and vulgar predilections couldn't be
translated intact to a studio film and, indeed, the character we see on
screen is but a shadow of the vibrant comic book creation.  Someone, of
course, is to be commended for giving a green light to the project in
the first place.  Certainly nothing else at the multiplex looks or
sounds quite like TANK GIRL.  It's a minor stroke to cast Ice-T as a
ripper, indistinguishable yet unmistakable underneath his makeup.  And
Hollywood isn't usually wise enough to hire someone like Courtney Love
(Cobain) to oversee a rock soundtrack.  This one features jewels like
Devo's "Girl U Want" and Joan Jett and Paul Westerberg duetting on
"Let's Do It."

     Comic book frames are cut into the film while the soundtrack
throbs underneath to give TANK GIRL the rough-and-tumble momentum that
propelled the original stories.  In this way, the film reinforces its
own second-class status.  Artist Jamie Hewlett, after all, didn't have
someone else's work to rely on to fill the gaps in his own readers'
experience.  And while a rock and roll soundtrack may have enhanced
your own reading experience, the comic book proved on its own that it
had music in its soul.

-- 
Bryant Frazer http://www.panix.com/~bfrazer/flicker/
Retransmit freely in cyberspace.