Not John Carpenter's finest hour... (Third World Cop (DVD))

Member Name: Borat

Product:	Third World Cop (DVD)
Date:	22/03/01 (123 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Hilarious

Disadvantages: Would you actually pay money for it?

They Live is an extremely funny film, though it perhaps wasn't meant to be. Some people I know who have seen it think it is a satire, others just think it is bad!

A quick summary - the tagline "Armed with only a pair of special sunglasses and a sub machine gun, Nada must save the world from the alien invasion." Oh Dear. Most films star people you've heard of, but this one stars Rowdy Roddy Piper, an ex wrestler.

My own opinion is that They Live is a film to watch if you want a good laugh, not if you want to analyse it extensively. The plot is thinner than tissue paper, which adds to the comedy - basically the world has been infiltrated by aliens who are controlling the rest of us with subliminal messages. That's it. It's up to Nada (Rowdy Roddy Piper) to stop them, but I won't give the ending away in case you feel compelled to watch it.

Since I feel this is a comedy - I will give a quick rundown of the comic moments in chronological order -

Rowdy Roddy finds a pair of special sunglasses (no one knows how) and tries them on. They turn the world black and white, and reveal what billboards "really" say (eg. Marry and Reproduce on a food ad) and that we are surrounded by aliens, who look like businessmen with gas masks on. There then follows a scene where Roddy looks at about six billboards with and then without the sunglasses, just to emphasise the point.

Rowdy Roddy walks into a bank, looks around, and delivers the immortal line "I have come here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I'm all out of gum". This was apparently ad-libbed by Rowdy Roddy, and later used in Duke Nukem 3D. He then proceeds to shoot up all the aliens in the bank. When he goes outside he is chased by the city's whole police force, yes, three police cars! (It later falls to two)

The infamous fight scene - Rowdy Roddy tries to get his (only) friend - Frank, to try on the special sunglasse
s, and he refuses, so they start fighting, pausing for Roddy to say "I don't want to fight you". They then continue fighting (or should I say wrestling) for at least 15 minutes, until Frank smashes a bottle against his own car. Strange.

In a chase scene in the TV studio (where the aliens are controlling everyone from), two guards appear from around a corner, and a man is seen running behind them. The shot then cuts to Roddy, when it goes back to the guards the man has actually moved backwards to a point before where he was in the previous shot! A superbly bad edit.

There are many more unintentional comedy moments in They Live, but I won't go through them all, you'll just have to watch it and find out! The only reason I am giving it this rating is because it is soooo funny. If you want a film to make you laugh then this is it.

*** I would like to point out to everyone who thinks I am insane in buying this video, I didn't - it was a friend's copy I watched. ***

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