Subject: REVIEW: TANK GIRL

From: [email-masked] (David Petry)
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 1995 13:43:16 GMT

TANK GIRL
		       A film review by David Petry
			Copyright 1995 David Petry

     When I left the theater, I was shaking my head back and forth--and
grinning from ear to ear.  TANK GIRL is the goofiest movie I have ever
seen, and I loved it.

     In the first scene, we see Tank Girl (Lori Petty) riding some kind
of ox out in the desert.  Both the ox and Tank Girl are wearing totally
outlandish outfits, with gas masks and goggles for starters, and we
hear Lori Petty in her cute childish voice introducing us to the
story.

     It's the year 2030, and a comet has struck the earth and thereby
upsetting the weather patterns so that it hasn't rained in many years.
Of course, this makes water extremely valuable, and a ruthless
corporation called the Department of Water and Power is working to
establish a monopoly on what little water is  available.

     Tank Girl is a one of a group of renegades resisting the
Department.  Along the way, she gets kidnapped and enslaved, but then
escapes along with another slave  Jet Girl (Naomi Watts) and teams up
with the Rippers--half man, half kangaroo genetically engineered super
soldiers--to ultimately defeat the Department and its deliciously evil
leader (Malcolm McDowell).

     But what's important in this movie is not where they get to, but
how they get there.  They get there in style.

     To get a feel for the style they go in, Tank Girl wears HEAVY
METAL clothes, has a shaved head, pierced body parts (at least I think
she did) and drives around in a tank that comes complete with lawn
furniture!  You've got to see it to believe it.

     Adding to the general absurdity of this movie is the creative use
of cartoons and special effects, wacky costumes and sets, and Tank
Girl's incessant feminist wise-cracking.  We get to see the kangaroo
men hoping wildly all over the place, and we hear Tank Girl questioning
men's adequacy.

     At times the movie almost seems to have a strong man-hating
message.  The men (except perhaps the men who are half kangaroo) in the
movie are caricatured as evil, power hungry louts who want only one
thing from women.  But the actresses do such a good job of not taking
themselves (or anything else, for that matter) too seriously, that it
can all be taken in stride.

     It'd be easy to criticize this movie as being silly and
senseless.  And it is.  But so what? It's good fun.  I'd recommend that
you take a chance on it.

     Oh, a rating?  I have no idea how to give this movie a rating on a
scale of 1-10.  This movie is from another dimension.