Film Junkies

DOUBLE DRAGON (USA. 1994)

Silly. Stupid. Worthless. All of those words can easily apply to this head scratching adaptation of hit 8 bit video game DOUBLE DRAGON. It all takes place in a bizzaro world run by Saturday morning cartoon gangs and a cackling evil millionaire villain (Robert Patrick) that are after the two brother heroes (Marc Dacascos and Scott Wolf). It all involves some murkily explained supernatural medallion that grants invincibility and body hopping powers. If you want a course in overacting and cringe worthy dialogue, this is the place to settle down. The comedy is composed of screaming uncontrollably when something dangerous arises, running away and then defeating them in some heeeeelllaaarious way. Action scenes are nearly non-existent even with the amazing Marc Dacascos (See DRIVE and BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF) going to waste once again. As previously stated there’s nothing of real worth here, just silliness that rolls by before your eyes and causes only minor physical pain. It suffers from SUPER MARIO BROS syndrome of making everything WACKY while at the same time frightening (Mario Bros had the ‘effin scary shrunken headed Koopas and Double Dragon has the freakish giant muscle man. Guaranteed to haunt kids dreams!)

EXPLORERS (USA. 1995)

I’m a massive fan of Director Joe Dante's (Gremlins) brand of goofy old school style of filmaking and when he made a picture about Children, Science and Aliens, my interest was peaked. All of those are the building blocks for Dante genius, and it’s a shame that what he delivered has some shining parts, but falls apart the second it leaves the atmosphere. It’s a surprisingly uneventful picture in which a bunch of kids discover a blue alien sphere (through computer science), build a spaceship, and then go out into space. There’s no conflict, no big bad, or any real point. The kids are charming (River Pheonix and Ehthan Hawke) and the world that Dante builds feels real, but there’s really no meat on a story that is forcibly stretched out to an hour and forty six minutes. It wins points for not talking down to its audience, but loses a chunk for feeling like a twist episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE.