Review of Mad Max (1979) by Guillaume H — 10 May 2015

This first movie has visual flair. The creepiness is top, even if sometimes accidental. The campiness though, is involuntary... The people who wrote this are fascinated by stupid. Like dangerous level stupid.

Its anti technocrat, yes, but yells it like a 13 year-old mid-tantrum. Its supposedly about the violence a crisis energy could generate ( a basis I dont think is ever really shown) but at first sight its a showcase for the violence itself.

Violence as an attitude is definitely a lead character of the plot and central to the style. It also got a drugs-are-bad thing going, at least... I think? But I really hope they were high when they wrote this, that would explain a lot.

And the characters.... Im not sure whats their problem, really. They react to situations like they are in a different movie. Mel Gibson seems particularly unaware of what his lines even mean...But I really enjoy the mixes; Earthy and metal, polyester and leather, wide horizons and rusting panels, teary eyed musclepacks and melogooey impromptue music cues, screaming madmen and prim public announcement crispyfried with nonsense, west side story bad boys meets John Water's freak show, elegies and rants, remains of pastoral furniture pitted against Hot rod in fluo paint settings(!?), plastic mannequins full of bullets and terrible lip singers, bikers with eyeliner and old farm ladies with riffles, topped with tiny dick boisterousness syndrome, always way over the top, all this cast in a totally retro Future.

This is not dystopian, its just idiots on crac, but at the end I have decided its a comedy (that panders to humankind's stupidest aspects), and I choose to find it funny.Ish. And Ominous, Like twits with guns.

And, well, Australian, wich is Cool!