Review of Rubber (2010) by Trevor C — 10 Mar 2012

The 'artistic' intro (which is instantly gives away a certain magic that the film is trying to convey, thus slightly ruining what could have been an outstandingly good film) is a bit much with its 'no reason' reasoning, which is the completely wrong reason for this film to be made. That's the first thing that turned me off, it was like a magician telling us how he does his trick even though it's already completely obvious. It sort of insults a more intelligent audience's intelligence, but after that horrible introduction things start to build up towards being something better. The premise is brilliant - a tire brought to life by some unknown ('no reason') force and instantly has this urge to kill or destroy the things around it. For no reason. Soon it realizes - after squishing a water bottle and a bug, it can't break a glass bottle. So, for reasons unknown (no reason) it gains psychokinetic abilities that can explode stuff.

One annoying aspect - off the top - is that there's these audience members with binoculars in the movie, for no reason, that make comments to each other. It's really unnecessary, and again, it's the things like this that turn me off to the movie. Not that it was all that bad, but it grew tedious to have to see this god damn audience members with their binoculars. Sure it was original, but it wasn't good necessarily. It didn't work for me.

The foundation that the film is based on 'no reason' really ticks me off in a way, and to say that certain things in other films happen for 'no reason' - which some do - is ridiculous and heavily arguable (love and the Pianist 'no reason' explanations were far fetched, only idiots don't know the reason. Not that this director/writer is an idiot necessarily, but that idea is a little ignorant and bothersome to consider all throughout the film. Sure a reason can be difficult to come up with or even hard to explain, but nothing is entirely random or unexplainable - even if this tire coming to life is by the director's creative point of view. Though, in fact, there was a reason behind the story, and that's that the director thought it up. Whether he knows or accepts to know what caused him to think up the story may be unknown, but even if it's unknown to him, there is still a reason subconsciously hidden.

The film definitely had its points of brilliantness - such as when the tire first finds a rabbit, explodes it and is extremely pleased with itself (the tone of the film revealed this). Then this whole exploding of animals and people's heads seems to grow tiresome real fast. It's creative sure, at first, but once we've seen it, we've seen it. There's a real lack of character development, and so one can only really view this as a stylistic piece rather than an actual narrative story.

The only imaginable statement behind this film is nothingness, and the lack of artistry and creativity that this film thinks it has is pretty disappointing. I guess if you're looking for something different, this is certainly different, whether you agree with its lack of reason or not or even really enjoy its slow humored style. Had it been more of a grindhouse-ish exploitation film it definitely would have at least been entertaining, and probably could have gotten away with something far more brilliant. Instead it aims for less risk, or even for something attempting to be suspenseful. It takes itself a little too seriously, but if you're curious then I guess it's worth checking out - and there are a few moments of brilliancy - but beyond that its only worth seeing once for what ever lack of reason. No reason.