Popcorn Pulse 26: Chicago Adventures

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In the great tradition of mashups comes a film from the nineties that takes Short Circuit and Friday the 13th and blends them without care for the end result. We do our joint review, based on a recommendation, on Evolver from 1995. And like all movies about technology from that decade, it features VR helmets and polygon graphics that would embarrass anyone who’s ever held a joystick.

Luckily for everyone, the main thrust of the film has little to do with shitty video games as imagined by a screenwriter who only has a fuzzy impression based on a round of Donkey Kong he watched the local kids play while washing his sheets at the laundromat. It is instead focused on a toy robot built by Q who decides that people suck and could use a little more hatchet in the face to make them right. The robot, Evolver, is then thwarted by the kid from Dutch and his designated love interest, the girl who was on one episode of Clarissa Explains It All.

Weltall then talks about Chicago, a musical. It’s flat, stupid and full of more bad music than a Karaoke bar at one AM. Yet somehow it won best picture, beating out The Two Towers and Gangs of New York. Something that seems perfectly rational when, over a decade later, now everyone either thinks of the city or crust type when they hear Chicago and only the actors remember the movie.

Tim turns the focus on a classic which has since been remade a couple of times, The Poseidon Adventure. It’s about a ship that gets hit by a rogue wave and capsized. A small band of survivors, bullied by an intense Gene Hackman at some of his best, head towards the engine room to escape the rising waters. It’s also based on a book that is, frankly, just straight messed like the lawn after a flock of geese migrated by. So, score one for Hollywood, we guess.

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