You would be hard pressed to find another movie this bad. In fact if you make a personal challenge, to find a movie that is this grotesquely bad, you will find yourself frustrated. I would rather spend a day watching the director's cut of 'Ishtar' in slow motion than have to spend another moment of my life watching
scar-faced Steve Guttenberg 'Clint Eastwood' his way through this strip of video (listen to Guttenberg talk in this film, and the reference to Clint will be clear). The plot is simple (and really, really tired): someone has stolen what is evidently the most horrendous virus known to man. It's up to Steve Guttenberg and his 'black ops' team known as 'Mach 1' to get it back. And thus begins our friction-free slide into the celluloid hell that is 'Airborne'. When I first saw the container in which this 'virus' was stored, I felt a pang of familiarity: it looks similar to - no, it looks exactly like a small collection of ... bath beads. I am certain that if this virus were ever to escape, you'd be more likely to die from the brain injury that would result from slipping on the virus than from actually being infected by it. We now enter an incredible flying machine, which is inclined on a platform awaiting lift-off. On our right, Mr. Guttenberg, and his two Mach 1 colleagues, all three strapped in as you might expect someone to be while preparing to go from a motionless to weightlessness in mere seconds. On our left in the cabin is the Mach 1 boss 'Ron Simpson', played by Colm Feore. Mr. Simpson seems to have the ability to thwart the laws of physics: he has on no seatbelt, is in a standard low-back swivel office chair, and ... he's sitting sideways. With the flick of a switch, and an order from the sticky-bottomed Ron Simpson, the 'rocket' is blasted into the stratosphere. The clouds of evaporating dry ice provide the very effective sense that this ship is entirely immobile. Cut now to a climactic and breathtaking scene in which Steve Guttenberg stands heroically on the roof of a limousine, which limousine is chasing after a plane that is preparing for take-off. Our first shot: Steve, bolt upright, arms outstretched in the way wrestlers used to pose in the 1950's, standing perfectly still while a camera tracks underneath him and past the limousine. What makes our second shot incredible isn't the way with which Steve is struggling against the incredible wind felt while standing on the roof of a car travelling 80 miles per hour. What makes it incredible is the way in which the camera seems to add not only weight to Mr. Guttenberg, but also height and male pattern baldness! Oh, the magic of the movies!
April 8, 2004
