Repo Chick (2009)

How sad is this?

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

I am a big fan of Alex Cox the movie connoisseur, the long time presenter of the Moviedrome series on British television dedicated to cult and obscure films. Each film he would introduce cult classic and give us an interesting insight on the night's film. Cox showed passion, intelligence and a respect for some of the actors and directors of cultish cinema.Alex Cox the film director has always fallen short. He showed promise with his first feature with Repo Man, a flawed cult film itself. However films such as Walker or Straight to Hell showed us an uneven even an overindulgent filmmaker playing by his own rules.By the early 1990s it was clear Cox was no longer welcome by the big film studios as he was heading south making Spanish language cinema in Mexico whereas director's such as Robert Rodriguez were heading the other direction.In Repo Chick, Cox revisits the themes from Repo Man but turns it into satire on celebrity culture, banking crisis and corrupt politics.A dispossessed heiress joins the Repo business. She ends up on a trip on a train which gets hijacked by terrorists who want to outlaw golf.The movie is filmed entirely on Green Screen with some use of animation. The CGI can look off putting and also shows its low budget origins. It certainly is not a mainstream film even though Cox got the BBC to be a co-producer of the movie. Its uneven, unfocused but it has a charm and some well known actors, although it does confirm that Cox's best days as a director are well behind him.

I *really* wanted to like this movie. In the short period from 1984 to 1987, Alex Cox gave us the Repo Man, Sid and Nancy, Straight to Hell, and Walker (yes, I even liked Walker!). He's sort of foundered ever since, and I was hoping this might be his redemption. I was destined to be very disappointed.First there's the filming technique. It's done almost entirely on green screen, and then set against backgrounds mostly made of models, many of them literally model train sets. This all seemed naggingly familiar, then hit it hit me: the great Alex Cox had ripped off Thomas the Tank Engine! I guess this was supposed to be surreal and artsy, but it just looked cheap and stupid. Reportedly, he did this to stay below the $200k threshold of the Screen Actors Guild. The thing is, Repo Man was filmed for $160k and (even correcting for inflation) looks about 20 times more professional than this movie.Although this isn't really a sequel, he puts in a number of the people from the original, but this mostly reminds you that they haven't worked much since. There are also some fairly big name actors, like Patricia Arquette, Karen Black, Chloe Webb, and Miguel Sandoval, and they're completely wasted - with the arguable exception of Sandoval, who does a fairly decent job. It shot in 10 days, using what appears to be a rough draft of a concept for a script. It appears they also did it Ed Wood style, always using the first take. The plot is a weird mix of heavy handed social commentary and a desperate attempt to capture the quirky magic of Repo man, and it fails at both. Because it's trying so hard, it also fall short in the "so bad it's good" category.Finally, the music, or lack of it. The iconic soundtrack was the magic pixie dust that turned Repo Man into a timeless gem, and a good soundtrack could even have saved this, at least at some level. However, what little music there is is clearly designed to *remind* us of the original, without stepping on any copyrights or paying any musicians. In the end, that was the last nail in the coffin.I suppose if you're an Alex Cox fan, you have no choice but to watch this movie, but don't say you weren't warned.

Spoiled rich bad girl heiress Pixxi De La Chasse (the adorable, but hopelessly charmless and obnoxious Jaclyn Jonet) gets disinherited by her snooty family and is forced to get a job as a repo chick. She proves to be a natural at the gig and sets her sights on nabbing a train with a hefty one million dollar bounty on it. However, a group of bumbling terrorists hijack the train and threaten to destroy Los Angeles unless their demands that golf is outlawed are met. Sound good? Well, it just ain't. Writer/director Alex Cox fails to bring even a smidgen of wit, style, or verve to the dopey premise. Moreover, the meandering narrative plods along at an excruciatingly sluggish pace and the soundtrack is loaded with forgettable crummy songs. Worse yet, a cool supporting cast is shamefully wasted on the lackluster material: Robert Beltran, Chloe Webb, Rosanna Arquette, Karen Black, Frances Bay, Del Zamora, and even original "Repo Man" holdover Olivia Barash. The fact that the lead female character is an insufferably shallow and snippy unappealing wealthy bitch who's way too similar to Paris Hilton for comfort doesn't help matters any. Shot largely in front of green screens, this film looks terribly cheap and cheesy. Only Miguel Sandoval as laid-back and likable cowboy repo man supreme Arizona Gray manages to rise above the general tedium and mediocrity. Sorely bereft of the fierce punky vigor and gleeful nihilistic humor of the terrific 1984 cult classic, this dreary dud is well worth avoiding.

After hearing for years about the rumors of a sequel to "Repo Man," one of the most out-there plot-driven insanely fabulous film from the 80's, and that it would be directed by Alex Cox, the godfather of punk films, I waited as delay after delay after delay came and went, and then finally - the promotional artwork for it arrived.Then I saw the poster. Oh my god.Was this a joke? Was I being punk'd by a lame over-hyped actor/model type on a now dead and useless music television show? Sadly, I was not.This disaster - this is the only way I can be honest and describe it - is somehow only tied in to the original film by name and just only a microhair of it's plot included.I sad down and tried - TRIED - to understand the idea behind the scenes of this "creation," but was so overwhelmingly bad, so mind-numbingly awful, that as soon as it was over I wanted to buy a gun, wait the 30 days alone in my room to own it, and then go to the store, buy it, bring it home, open the box, load the gun with a specially made hollow-point mercury-tipped bullet, and then aim it at my head and pull the trigger.I will NOT give you any details of the plot (oh yeah, right, there's a PLOT...) whatsoever, because anything I'd tell you would be too stupid to be believed or just too sad to describe here and make you enjoy the original Repo less, as it has done for me.All I can say is that if you ever - EVER - actually find yourself in a position to see this "film," please PLEASE be ready to be disappointed.I sat through this with all the hope and faith in Alex, but by the end credits I felt more like Alex in "A Clockwork Orange" in full torture mode, and I lost my eyedropper of saline solution some time back.This isn't even worthy of fan submission sequels on any level. There were almost no original scenes "filmed" as it was 95% green-screen, the kiss of death for even the newest rookie of directors, and the acting? Positively awful.It was if Katy Perry was given a chance to drip her pink bubblegum paintbrush of awfulness over some simplistic and sad video directing 101 class at some suburban community college, complete with student actors, veteran actors' talents who are completely wasted, and then there's Karen Black - ecch oh my god WHAT IS GOING ON HERE????????? I want to give it 1 out of ten, but that would almost insult anyone at the bottom who earnestly tried to make a cohesive film and failed miserably.This video "film" looks cheap, amateurish, and thought out with all the brain power it took to push this out of their anus before flushing it down onto Netflix, or whatever fools bought into this horrible horrible excuse for "entertainment." I've seen fake Russian roulette snuff videos with more thought out ideas.Sorry, I do feel really bad if you had anything to do with it, especially as an actor, because this has fail fail fail written all over it, and when you make up your resume for your next tryout for a film, leave this off of it.This creatively bankrupt "film" will make you never want to try to do anything positive in your life ever again, and finally - please sue Alex Cox for your almost two hours back of your life, please?