There’s a moment early in Repo Men in which Jude Law’s Remy, an artificial-organ retrieval operative, is reclaiming the liver of a past-due gentlemen whom Remy has tasered to subdue. In the middle of Remy’s legally-mandated questionnaire about whether the man would like to have an ambulance present, the man’s date attacks Remy. “There’s no need for violence, miss,” assures Remy, and promptly tasers her, too.

Most of Repo Men feels like this. I don’t mean stale one-liners inserted into a premise that devolves into a by-the-book dystopia. I mean, it feels like being tasered.

Theoretically, Repo Men should be a movie for our time because it focuses on the punitive bait-and-switch of privatized healthcare, and the seemingly inhuman ability of corporate employees to enact greed cycles without thought to the human cost—two timely concepts that absolutely deserve screen time, especially tackled metaphorically in a sci-fi setting.

Practically, though, Repo Men is a movie for our time because it’s a hyper-violent, poorly-scripted, nominally sci-fi clunker that fails to deliver on its premise.

And the premise itself isn’t bad. In fact, despite a too-jokey voiceover, the film’s opening fifteen minutes set the stage for a dark comedy that might have pulled off the intended criticism of corporate culture and the many villainies of recession. Repo men wear the short-sleeved dress shirts of a third-tier bank teller, and their corporate headquarters features Disneyfied men-in-lung-suits for kids to play with. Law himself is suitably engaging as a man who’s not only efficient at his job, but might in fact love what he does. Law has always been much better at arch, creepy character parts than as a leading man, and for these fifteen minutes the role suits him. Forest Whitaker is equally strong; if the director had the courage to make his leads interesting rather than likable, this might have turned out to be a satire worth seeing. (Liev Schreiber, a bright spot as the smarmy corporate honcho, goes through the whole movie pretending this is the movie he’s actually in.)

Unfortunately, the film makes a fatal error by giving Remy an on-the-job accident that requires him to get an artificial heart from his own company. Back on the streets, he suddenly finds reserves of sympathy for those he disembowels, and is unable to carry out any of his job tickets—he’s lost the heart for it. (GET IT?) There’s not nearly enough audience goodwill built up for Remy to indulge him in his revelations that life is precious. It’s empty and static, and by the time he’s conveniently cut off by his family and goes on the run to the abandoned housing project of Paradise (GET IT?), the writing’s on the wall.

From here, it’s a full-on Science Fiction After-School Special, as Remy enters an underworld of dirty-yet-plucky folk fleeing repossession (including a sassy nine-year-old surgeon), falls in love with a comely-waif runaway, fights repeatedly and viciously against his ex-partner (sent to repo him, of course), and at last decides to gain freedom for all people, or at least for himself, by finding the Pink Door at Union headquarters and Bringing Down the Man From The Inside. (…Mary Kay?)

These plot markers are largely accomplished through graphic fight scenes, in which Jude Law makes his fight choreographer proud, and the filmmakers finance the entire fake-gore industry for another year. (This is discounting the gore factor of the actual repo scenes.) One of the less explicit fight scenes involves a typewriter dropped from a great height and a pressurized blood balloon. Squeamish moviegoers, take note.

I won’t spoil the last act, not so much out of journalistic integrity as a desire for the unsuspecting to suffer as I suffered. Suffice it to say it’s a series of increasingly-vacuous Big Moments that culminate in a laughably bad denouement—which is nice, I guess, since at least that way the movie gets one laugh.

Larger than my problems with the film itself, though, are my problems with what a film like this represents. With paint-by-numbers violence, stock characters, and half-baked plotting, Repo Men is science fiction only in the vaguest sense. At best, it’s a bad action film in geek’s clothing. At worst, it’s just a marker of how “science fiction” has come to mean “slapping some futuristic CGI over various recycled plot elements and calling it a day.” Repo Men is just another in a long series of examples of why it’s hard for some to believe that science fiction can be an exciting, engaging, and cerebral genre; with friends like Repo Men, who needs enemies?

[This piece originally appeared on Tor.com.]

It’s good to know that as I’m working hard on my projects, carefully trying to establish narrative, comedy gold is happening by accident in my backyard.

The Musical Theatre Neighbors are having their first afternoon party of spring. They have foregone the usual show tunes, however, and are instead dancing very seriously to what sounds like 1993-era house techno…all six of them. It’s like when Middleman went to the debauched sorority party, and it was two dozen extras holding balloons and red cups and vaguely shimmying. Cool it down there, you Dionysians!

(Oh, Musical Theatre Neighbors, Never change.)

As the workload is heavy, blogging this week will be light. So here, have something fun!

I’m sure everyone in the world has seen this already, but still: for whatever reason, I like the Drunk History series. (Minus the ones that show barfing. Come on, people, there’s no need.) My favorite is the Oney Judge episode below; there’s something so earnest about it, and the hiccups are amazing.

But the best part of this is the hand-smacking “SHE. LIVED. IN. THE WOODS,” because now my sister and I can use that whenever things are terrible, and no one around us knows what’s going on. Except, now, all of you. Keep that under your hat, everyone.

Way back when, I mentioned a bizarre pop starlet named Lady Gaga. Since then, she’s broken through, and is now everywhere, all the time. The sun never sets on the Gaga Empire.

In a remarkable show of consistency on Lady Gaga’s part, everything I said in that entry still holds true, especially the part about false social constructs and the part about her music burrowing its way into your cranial folds so that during important moments -- say, addressing the United Nations -- you will stand before the throng and say, “I promise this, promise this. Check this hand, ’cause I’m marvelous.” (And if movies have taught me anything, the UN will give you a standing ovation and/or break out a dance party over the credits, depending on whether you’ve been in a drama or a road-trip comedy.)

I’m checking in with her now to run down her crib notes for her latest video, “Telephone.”

WHAT THE ACTUAL SONG IS ABOUT
- Girl in a club on the phone with her boyfriend, who has called several times that night.
- She’s out dancing with friends, and she’s sick of him trying to reach her.
- She tells him to stop calling, presumably breaking up with him.

THINGS THAT HAVE NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH THIS SONG
- Russ Meyer girls-in-prison pulp movies
- Truck stop diners
- Unlawful fugitive road-trip movies
- Living on a sheep farm
- Cooking shows
- Mass murder
- Tiger suits with exoskeletons

Gaga made this list, looked it over, and said, “We don’t have time to find sheep. Let’s just film the rest.”

Below, the NOT SAFE FOR WORK ten-minute video for “Telephone.”

Say what you will about this video (and I actually don’t like it, for several reasons), she still managed to turn in a product that widens her image. She’s previously existed in the space-alien realm, but she hit the Russ Meyer trash-movie rockabilly revenge angle as hard as she hits everything, taking genre trappings (women-in-prison, greasy spoons, cigarettes) and pushing them into the absurd. The lit-cigarette sunglasses in particular made me groan, then laugh, as I’m pretty sure is their purpose. (If we are supposed to take them seriously, then she and I need to talk.)

Best part: at the 6:21 mark, one of the backup dancers slides across the bottom foreground of the frame, listening to the head of lettuce he has pressed to his ear. That right there? Is ART.

So, I saw Alice in Wonderland over the weekend!

Before the showing, there was a line of about 200 people (half of whom bolted when they realized they’d bought tickets to the NOT 3-D showing), and the two teenage girls ahead of me spent a long time on a conversation like this:

Girl 1: I mean, I just have such a crush or whatever on her because she’s so, like, different, you know? And it’s not just the accent, it’s how she’s so, like, different. Like, not shallow?

Girl 2: Oh god, I’m so tired of shallow people.

Girl 1: Me, too. (pause) How much do we like my new hair?

Girl 2: We LOVE your new hair.

I thought that was amazing and hysterical, until I realized that it was not a punchline; they were stone serious. Then I didn’t know where to look.

That’s pretty much how the movie is; every five minutes Burton does something, and you think, “This cannot be serious, there is a twist coming,” and then you realize there is no twist coming, and that Burton is stone serious, and then you just don’t know where to look.

It’s really a shame, because of all the modern filmmakers who could have taken this on, I would have said that Tim Burton was a pretty solid choice, but we’ve already entered that era where old-Burton would have been a solid choice, and now it’s just him cranking a story through his Whimsy Machine and hoping for the best.

For a more coherent review, read the whole thing at Fantasy Magazine.