First Blood, 1982. Three and a Half Stars.
My childhood had been filled with lots of Rambo references, so I'm sure I'd seen this movie at some point a long time ago. Couldn't have told you a thing about it, though; the only thing I remembered is my sister Sara's Rambo weeble-esque punching bag and toy machine gun, and the spoof with Weird Al Yankovic in UHF. So... nothing about the actual movie.
Yet, in my heart, when thinking about revisiting this movie, I'd get all fidgety. I have an awful memory, and I tend to only remember my emotions and reactions to things rather than the actual things. And my infant brain apparently only remembers the tedious parts of movies. For example, before re-watching these movies when I was older, this is all I had recalled from Baby Chrissy's memories:
- Big Trouble in Little China: Kurt Russell got lipsticked from kissing a girl, and he and friends are walking in a mucky tunnel. And that lightning guy!
- The Abyss: Water and lights.
- Poltergeist: That the little girl died from the flu and the girl at the end of the movie was a double. Yeah I know that happened in the third one but that's all I could remember about any of the Poltergeist movies.
- Dirty Dancing: That bitchin' song during that final dance (I really really liked that part of the movie; actually I haven't watched it in ages, I don't know what happens in this movie!!).
So, I think for First Blood, I know there was supposed to be a lot of kick ass-edry, but all I remembered was a guy in a forest and me being bored watching that, so thinking about re-watching it made me think about being fidgety.
But I worked through it and indeed watched it again. (In fact, I rented it from my sister Sara!) It was not what I expected. It WAS full of kick ass-edry, but I felt really bad for Rambo. Really, those numbnuts called the cavalry on a dude who fought for their country and now has nowhere to go so he gets charged with vagrancy? And they chase him all around trying to kill him and people die? It was ridiculous. But I still enjoyed it, especially the whole psychology part!
I should probably watch all the other ones. I hear the fourth one actually isn't half bad!!
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I love "UHF". It makes me want to forgive Fran Drescher for "The Nanny," and Michael Richards for his post-"Sienfeld" mishegoss. My choice for the teaser quote: "Badgers? We don't need no stinkin' badgers!" My favorite gag is purely visual, when a man walks into station executive R.J. Fletcher's office wearing a huge, garishly ornamented cowboy hat, and Fletcher snaps, "Get out of my office . . . and take that ridiculous thing off!" so the man peels off his moustache. The high point of the movie is the dream sequence that parodies Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing." When Weird Al contacted Mark Knopfler for permission to record a parody of his song, Knopfler gave his consent on one condition: That he could play lead guitar on the parody.
The fourth Rambo movie is not great by any means, but it's sufficiently violent and wraps up the franchise nicely. Since you saw the first movie you can skip on over to the last one without feeling like you're missing something.
BTW-I finally added this to my Google reader so now I can keep up with your posts and actually comment in a timely fashion!
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