BeezulVonDude

Loving all the Christopher Lee appreciation. In addition to all his Nazi killing, let's not forget that homeboy also put out a couple of death metal albums in his 80s and 90s. Man was a straight up legend. I can't believe no one mentioned that Ben is played by Reb Brown, also known as Slab Bulkhead, Big McLargeHuge, et al. from MST3K's classic "Space Mutiny" episode. He even does all the unnecessary screaming while firing his gun.

I like to think there was an alternate ending where Balki gets taken onto the ship with Jon Lovitz from "My Stepmother is an Alien"

I had this thought too. In addition to his character being dull, his only purpose is to explain or handle Bobby, but, really it's a much funnier concept to have someone like Wills try to deal with the lunacy without any context. Story is defined by conflict and Preston does nothing but lessen the opportunity for conflict, other than when he's annoyed with ol' Highpants Larroquet trolling for booty.

Also, when I looked at the cover/poster for this, I thought Bronson Pinchot was Richard Lewis, so imagine my disappointment at seeing Balki in that cold open. I would 1000% be on board for a movie with Richard Lewis as a neurotic psychic. Someone get on that.

The exposition in this movie drove me nuts. Every character conveniently forgets things they should know for purposes of informing the audience or for a lame joke. Wills, despite having been with Bobby and Preston for some time, still needs to be told what's happening most of the time Bobby starts acting weird. Likewise, when Wills gets back from hitting on the redhead at the diner, Bobby asks him if he was successful and then IMMEDIATELY starts talking for Wills afterward since he can read his mind. Why'd he have to ask the first question. This goes on and on throughout the film and it doesn't help that the characters' histories and relationships are sloppily defined.

There is literally no upper limits to the appropriateness of Simpsons references. Duplicates, or otherwise.

First of all, is no one going to mention that genius Lex Luthor pronounces "nuclear" as nuke-yew-lehr at least twice? Second, why was Superman's hair protected by an around-the-clock burglar alarm? I guess I can buy that someone might want to steal it as like a souvenir, but really, you'd think the 1000lb weight would be enough of a deterrent. Also, Superman basically tried to kill Mr. No Pain No Gain, right? I get he was supposed to be distracted, but who throws weights? Jesus, Clark. I bet you don't even wipe down the machines when you're done.

Among the many, many dumb things in this movie, the train hostage bit really annoyed me. Parker knows at this point that SID is channeling his former America's Next Top Serial Killer foe who liked to play games with him AND has already riddled SID with bullets to zero effect, other than to have SID Daffy Duck his way away from the fight. So, SID takes a hostage and is obviously toying with Parker while trying to escape, but rather than just let him win, Parker keeps engaging him to try and take a shot he KNOWS isn't going to do anything. Maybe SID would have killed her anyway, but I doubt it; he didn't appear to hurt anyone else on the train. Instead, Parker keeps playing a game he knows he can't win, gets a shot off, and SID shoots the hostage in the back to "frame" him. All on you, Parker. You're a terrible cop.

So, Maria's character becomes suspicious of Ben's innocence when the news claims he killed some security guards at the airport during his escape attempt. But this is a fascist police state that guns down women and children. Why wouldn't they have killed her just for having associated with Arnold in the first place? Seems like it would be a tidier solution and serve to make Ben look ever worse. And why not just have killed Ben in the first place for dissection, but then of course there'd be no movie. Also, what was with that weird rule where Arnold had to volunteer for the Hungie Games because as ex-military he can't be forced like the other revolutionaries? Why does that matter to this regime and what does it do for the plot, other than to make him seem more selfless?

Omission: Gotta say, I'm more than a little disappointed that Curtis failed to mention the subplot in the novel wherein Jonesy slows Mr. Gray down during the chase by thinking really hard about bacon sandwiches, which makes Mr. Gray eat raw bacon and then get the trots; Jonesy has to explain to him how to use the bathroom. I feel like the poo motif was a bit scattershot in the movie and, had this sequence been included, the film would have been more cohesive overall and probably would have been a box-office winner.