Lollipop Chainsaw (2012)

Killing Zombies Gives Me Total Wood.

My inspiration for playing today’s game can sadly be defined with one word: boobies.  This movie appeared to have them in bulk.  Technically, there was probably more than interested me in this game.  I wouldn’t consider myself a fan of James Gunn – who collaborated on this game – but I’ve definitely had interest in things he’s done before.  I’ve also had interest in the games of his collaborator, Suda51, but I’ve also never played anything he’s taken part in.  I also consider myself a fan of the main voice actor in this game, Tara Strong, and I’ve actually enjoyed many things she’s taken part in.  But that’s far too much explanation and it’s much easier to say I played Lollipop Chainsaw strictly for the boobies.  In fact, all of that was too long.  Remind me to erase it later.  Lollipop Chainsaw was written by James Gunn, produced by Goichi Suda (Suda51), developed by Grasshopper Manufacture, published by Kadokawa Games and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and includes the voice acting of Tara Strong, Michael Rosenbaum, Kimberly Brooks, Linda Cardellini, Gregg Henry, Vanessa Marshall, Bruce Locke, Sean Gunn, Little Jimmy Urine, Michael Rooker, Shawnee Smith, Dave Fennoy, Rick D. Wasserman, Fred Tatasciore, Nolan North, and Kari Wahlgren.

Juliet Starling (Tara Strong) is a cheerleader that just turned legal.  But she is no ordinary cheerleader.  Well, technically she is exactly the definition of what you’d expect out of a cheerleader.  But also she carries a chainsaw and fights zombies.  She is off to meet her boyfriend at San Romero (HAAAAA!  I see what you did there, zombie game!) High School, but she arrives too late.  Her boyfriend Nick (Michael Rosenbaum) is bitten by a zombie.  She performs a ritual to allow his severed head to remain alive and decides to keep him around in this form.  It turns out that the whiny Goth kid Swan (Sean Gunn) has summoned the zombies because people in high school were mean to him.  He summons musical themed zombies – punk rocker Zed (Little Jimmy Urine), Viking drummer Vikke (Michael Rooker), hippie guitarist Mariska (Shawnee Smith), autotuned R&B-ish guy Josey (Dave Fennoy), and some kind of rock dude Lewis (Rick D. Wasserman) – to seek his revenge.  Along with Nick, Juliet teams with her sensei Morikawa (Bruce Locke), her Mom (Vanessa Marshall), Dad (Gregg Henry), gun-toting older sister Cordelia (Linda Cardellini), and clumsy younger sister with far too much energy Rosalind (Kimberly Brooks) to send them back to Hell, or wherever.

I knew what I was getting into with this game.  I had assumed that it would be a pretty run of the mill hack and slash game with occasional funny parts and lots of Japanese quirkiness.  So, now that I’ve proven that I can read the future, I will be accepting premium rates to read people fortune cookies and tell them I’m magic.  I really can’t say that there’s too much to say about the story of the game.  The zombies show up and Juliet has to kill the shit out of them.  The dialogue is pretty hit and miss in the game too.  Quite often, I found the dialogue between Juliet and Nick to be pretty cute, especially the part where Juliet thinks Nick speaks Japanese because he knows what the word “sensei” means.  But other parts of the dialogue just seemed like they were trying too hard to be funny, or perhaps even edgy.  Not really a problem, I suppose, but noticeable more in the times when they fall short.

Not a lot to say about the look of the game either.  It wasn’t particularly good and it wasn’t particularly bad.  It was fairly colorful and goofy in how dismembering zombies was muted by rainbows and stars because of how most guys think the world looks through the eyes of most girls.  The only real issue I took with the look of the game was the sexuality.  Don’t get me wrong; I love boobies.  The problem I had with it is that it felt like it was telling me way more than I ever would want to know about what James Gunn and/or Suda51 masturbate to.  That’s information I’d do better without.

The game plays well enough.  It’s vaguely Bayonetta-esque.  And by that, I mean it’s a hack and slash game.  Spam the hell out of that X button, then throw a Y button at the end for good measure.  They add a gun thing that doesn’t really work unless you take off auto-aim and a few other things to break up the monotony, with limited success.  They also often try to break things up with quirky minigames, like a baseball one where you have to protect zombie Nick as he rounds the bases and a basketball one where you try to make baskets with decapitated zombie heads, but these never really became more than irritants for me.

The achievements aren’t necessarily what I’d call easy, but they’re not the hardest ones either.  The only thing that makes them a bother is that it means you’ll probably have to replay levels a few times.  I got to about 800 before I finally got sick of the game and decided it wasn’t worth the bother anymore.  But I imagine I could’ve gotten 1000 without too much extra work.  It’s just that the game isn’t interesting enough for me to really work at it.

Lollipop Chainsaw was a goofy, fairly standard hack and slash game.  The story was simple, but funny enough when they weren’t trying too hard, and the look was pretty cute for a game with so much dismemberment.  But I’ve never really been a big fan of hack and slash games because I can only press X so many times before I realize that I’m getting bored.  This game is satisfying enough for a rental, but can’t justify a decent price tag.  Lollipop Chainsaw gets “What the dick?” out of “These zombies suck dick at driving.”

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Super (2010)

Shut up, Crime!

Podcasts had lead me to this movie that I may have only seen on my own because of one of the female stars and my infatuation with her. It didn’t seem like a movie that interested me even though I’m so big into superheros, but the podcasts that I heard it on talked me into it. So, let’s get into my review of the movie Super, written and directed by James Gunn, and starring Rainn Wilson, Liv Tyler, Kevin Bacon, the love of my life Ellen Page, Michael Rooker, Nathan Fillion, and Linda Cardellini.

Frank D’Arbo (Rainn Wilson) has not had a fantastic life. One of the few perfect moments in his life is when he married his lovely wife Sarah (Liv Tyler). That doesn’t really last long. See, Sarah is a recovering alcoholic and addict, and she eventually leaves Frank for Jacques (Kevin Bacon), her drug pusher. Depressed, Frank has a vision where he’s touched by the finger of God himself after watching a show starring the Holy Avenger (Nathan Fillion), a public-access religious superhero. He goes to his local comic book store for research on superheroes, where he meets Libby (Ellen Page). He creates a costume and becomes “The Crimson Bolt”, armed mainly with a big wrench that he uses to savagely beat people that break the law. Eventually he gets shot in the leg and has no choice but to go to Libby for help. She decides to become his sidekick, Boltie … and later rapes him. Then they must up their arsenal to take down Jacques and win back Sarah.

I dug all up into this movie. Not only is it a movie about a real life dude becoming a superhero (something that I’ve always wanted to do but was stopped by my laziness and aversion to pain, and also something I’ve written a short story about before), but it had a great comedy side, a great action side, and a great drama side to it. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this movie. Rainn Wilson’s depression over the loss of his wife was both sad and often humorous. It had great realistic action and some pretty awesome violent effects. From what little I knew about James Gunn’s previous movies, I figured he’d have more of a Troma movie vibe to him, where the violence is the reason for the movie and the story is secondary or worse, but this movie had a great story and the violence was only there to support the story. Most of the reviews I read for this movie completely disagree with me, but I find that happens fairly often with movies and that’s probably the inspiration for this entire review site. And it ties it all up with a nice touching message. I digs it.

The performances were even better than the story. I only knew Rainn Wilson for his comedy ability from the Office, where he was fantastic, but he’s got some acting chops that I was happy to see here. And I know he’s got acting chops because, at one point, he gets raped by Ellen Page and has to act like that’s not awesome. I couldn’t act like that. After a terrible loss suffered by his character near the end of the movie, he becomes a bona fide bad ass and wreaks all kind of Hell all over crime’s face, getting pretty damned un-Batman while he’s at it. I’ve never seen Liv Tyler act like a druggie before, and this was a great departure for her as well. I would posit she perhaps learned something from her dad on this, but that is just being rude of me. Kevin Bacon was awesome as well. He was the major antagonist of this movie; being the drug pusher that took Rainn’s wife and other such dick movies, but he was still really charming and somehow likeable. Ellen Page is the love of my life. …I guess I should say more. Her character called for her to be a female me. And she managed to do that without actually meeting me, which is how she’s still unmarried. She had a childlike innocence that has been sucked out of me long ago, and she would go completely manic when it was time to fight crime because she had idolized superheros for so long. That might could be me. And the girl friggin’ rapes a guy! I’ve only seen Demi Moore do that! Also, she “snikt’s” a guy! I want to be able to “Snikt!” It was nice to see Michael Rooker again, since I haven’t seen the guy since Mallrats, but his part is pretty small. I loves me some Nathon Fillion as well, and though his part in this movie is relatively small, it’s pivotal and pretty damn funny to boot.

Other critics can suck it. I dug this movie. I got it from Netflix and I recommend you do the same. Sadly it’s not available for streaming, but get it in the mail. Otherwise you can probably find it at RedBox by now. Give it a watch, says I. Me? I’m buyin’ this shit. I give this movie “That’s what happens in between the panels” out of “It’s all gooshy”.

And, as always, please rate, comment, and/or like this post and others. It may help me get better.