Armygeddon

Though I've long been aware of the many geek-revered quotes that originate from Army of Darkness, I'd never actually seen the movie itself. I recently decided to remedy that and earn whatever geek credits go with watching the film. But I had a hard time seeing what all the fuss was about.

Army of Darkness comes off like a movie made on the budget of whatever everyone involved happened to have in their wallets at the time. It's not a movie made effectively on the cheap, it's a movie that's proud of how cheap it is. Made in 1992, it's full of special effects that would have looked dated in 1972.

The plot is wafer thin, a loose weave meant only to hold the individual sequences from the fevered minds of Sam and Ivan Raimi. Even that may be too generous; the film feels more like fits of awkward ramp up to canned punch lines. These would be the quotes that so many people bandy about, which seemed like they could be funny out of context, but in context come off more like things that amateur writers thought sounded cool in their heads.

The one attraction is the ever-game star, Bruce Campbell. It's a stretch to say that he sells any of the bad visuals or ridiculous camp of the film -- it's all too far gone for that. But he does commit to every preposterous thing the movie asks him to do, and he himself seems to be having a hell of a fun time doing it. When he snaps off one-liner after one-liner, you can see imagine why people picked them up to use outside the film.

And yet, last I checked, this movie was rated 263rd best of all time over on Flickchart, and that's a level of adoration I can't begin to understand. No amount of thinking Bruce Campbell is the man (and he is) could begin to explain that love, or how a movie so weak and amateur could have a reach and influence so wide.

I grade it a D+. It's basically a waste of time other than to do as I did -- to fully educate yourself on the origin of phrases like "this is my boomstick," "gimme some sugar, baby," and the like.