Heavy Metal 2000

Don't get me wrong; this isn't necessarily a bad film. The animation is very well done, very slick and seamless. The writing and voice acting is competent and professional. The sound track is certainly better incorporated into the animation and story than it was in the original. Everything was competently done, it was just.... ordinary. Nothing jumped out at you. It was like a Saturday morning cartoon episode- just with a little more violence, and a lot more animated nudity (animated nudity- I mean what's the point?)

Personally, I'd save my money and buy the new release of the original Heavy Metal. Sure, the animation looks crude by today's standards- but it was done the old, time-consuming, expensive way of drawing one cell at a time. The original was also crammed full of a variety of different animation styles and story lines. Perhaps that was because it was the first big budget science fiction animated feature and the people involved had so much enthusiasm that they tried to do too much. In contrast, I don't think anyone got too enthusiastic about this film. Sure, they did a solid job of craftsmanship, but where is the originality, the fire, the spirit? Kind of reminds me of the original heavy Metal magazine, it started out fresh and new and just slowly petered out to nothing....

That being said, lets talk about this movie. A miner working on a meteor discovers an evil glowing rock that turns him evil and makes him do evil things. He promptly dubs himself the evil "Lord Tyler" and takes over the ship making the crew do evil things.

OK, listen, who the hell decided to name him Lord Tyler? That is the dumbest, most unthreatening name in film history. It sounds like a 98 pound dweeb who's been going at Dungeons and Dragons too much.

"Gna! I am Lord Tyler! Fear me! Gnaaaaaa!"

Any way, Lord Tyler takes his evil crew and quickly attacks a peaceful, defenseless planet because he can. Sadly, he fails to kill Julie and her sister, the latter which he kidnaps obviously so he can do evil things to her. Julie picks up an annoying sidekick because every needs one, and together they go to a space station.

What follows is one of the worst animated action scenes in history. Julie stands and shoots her gun, the villains stand and shoot their gun...and every dies except either of them. Clearly the bullets are hurt that these two groups of people would want to kill each other, and must kill others to show them that violence is stupid. Or maybe the director just stinks at making action scenes.

Lord Tyler gets away casting "magic missile" and lands on a planet inhabited by lizard beings and six-eyed weenies. The six-eyed weenies hold the water of eternal life, but Lord Tyler is scared by six-eyed people so he just goes with the lizard people instead, hoping to let them do the fighting for him. Julie tries to seduce and slaughter him, but some how the rock care bear in the story runs in, pulls her out, and the movie continues another thirty minutes.

Then there's the climactic battle between the lizards and weenies. Julie and archnemesis Lord Tyler duke it out in a poorly choreographed fight before he's finally killed (actually, his mom tells him to stop playing "Everquest" and asks him to come up for dinner). The movie could end, but then one of the good guys turns out to be a CG monster and the movie continues another five minutes. Then it ends. Finally.

So what is this storyline? Well, like reviewers before me have said, its basically the last story in the original film but stretched out for another hour and a half. It could have been cool but...no it wasn't.

The details have changed, but it's still the same story.

The same major plot points exist: "Joe Nobody" encounters weird green object that turns him evil. Newly evil bad guy slaughters docile people without warning. Babe in high heel boots hunts him down for payback. Bouncy cleavage shots ensue.

Don't get me wrong, I dig the cleavage... but no one actually got down and dirty. Onscreen nudity without sex = BORING.

Several scenes were torn DIRECTLY from the original movie's "Tarna" segment. Why do angry babes bent on revenge always catch the bad guys drinking at some dive bar?

The one scene that brought home the lack of originality was when our heroine FAKK2 takes a dip in a pool and gets dressed in a leather bikini to do battle near the end. It was a shot-for-shot remake of Tarna taking a dip in a pool, then dressing in a leather bikini to do battle in the original movie. I do not exaggerate, they both put on their Victoria's Secret battle gear the SAME WAY. That would have been fine if this was a true sequel connected to the previous story.

But this is not the case.

HM2K is boring. The attempts at jokes all fall flat. You can get more bawdy humor from an episode of South Park on TV. The action scenes are clunky. The ... shots do nothing to stir the libido. There are many other faults, but the main problem is that someone thought this was a great idea and decided to waste their money to make it.