Laura Reviews: Titan A.E.

The first time I saw Titan A.E., it was in the theatre with my brother and (now ex) girlfriend. Then, it was just kind of a cool cartoon with a random sci-fi plot, interspersed with whopping mistakes and parts that were actually kind of cool.

      Now it's more than half a year later, and I went over to My Friend Jason's house to play pool. After a game or two, we sat down to watch cartoons. We both loved Batman Beyond and tolerated a rerun of Pokémon. Then an episode of Pokémon with Tracy came on one channel and Digimon came on the other so of course we couldn't watch TV anymore! Then Jason just pushed Play on the VCR, didn't put a tape in or nothing, and there, magically, was Titan A.E.!

      It was unexpected to say the least, and extremely appreciated. As soon as I realized what it was I cried "I finished my nap!" It was great.

      I'm not saying Titan is a great movie. I'm saying it's loveable. It's bad, and I love it. I love it. I dunno, maybe it's just because not a fortnight goes by I don't make some reference to it, so it's gone down in Laura's Book of Funny Things to Talk About. Maybe it's because it just proved to me how much Jason is a great, great man, and I love him. I love him!

      Here are some things I particularly "liked".

"I finished my nap!" Obviously, the highlight of the whole movie. See, there's this part where a kinda old character, Gune, gets shot. "I'll be okay," he says weakly, as the other characters gather around his limp body. "Let me just... take a nap... for awhile..." Then he dies.
      Later in the movie, the characters look like they're in a pretty bleak situation: enemy ships bearing down on them, etc. Then suddenly out of space comes this little ship, wildly gunning down enemies. Who is it? Who is this strange new ally? Why, it's Gune, good old Dead Gune, shouting, "I finished my nap!!"

"Gune's your daddy!" Gune says this immediately after "I f'ed my n," so the first time I was to preoccupied with the nap thing to notice it. And I would have missed it again if Jason hadn't pointed it out. Presumably it's a reference to "Who's your daddy?", a popular question which hasn't survived the last six months, let alone the next hundred years or whatever. But presumably by then it's camp.

The guy who betrays them. The whole movie, this guy, Korso I think he is, is the nicest guy ever. He knew the main boy's dad in the war. He wants to help. He's such a sweetie! Then randomly in the middle it turns out that he's betraying the main characters to the evil guys. All of a sudden he's this horrible slavering loser! He takes on fits of twitching and stuff. What happened?
      Right near the end of the movie, the guy reforms suddenly and without motivation, sacrificing himself for the main character. Paul and Nate and I agreed the whole situation would have been so much better if he had never betrayed them, had just been terribly nice the whole time, then sacrificed himself for the boy. That would have been much more powerful and sad. A tear-jerker. Not that I cry at movies or anything... except The Return of the Jedi, at the end, and almost the eleventh episode of Utena, but that wasn't a movie...

The part in the middle where we got up and played pool. That wasn't in the movie the first time, because the theatre didn't have pool tables. But Jason's basement does, and me and Jason got bored about halfway through the movie and played a quick game. Jason was actually much better than me but he scratched on the eight ball so I won. Yay!

All-star voice cast. The best thing is you don't know who any of the voices are until the credits. You could kind of guess Drew Barrymore, but you thought she was a better actress before. And then you're like, "Matt Damon, okay." And then you're like "Nathan Lane? Sure," and then you're like "What? Janeane Garofolo? Hey, yeah, okay!" and then you're like "What the frig??! Ton-Loc?!!"

The fact that the enemies are "pure energy." No they're not. They're tangible. They have shape. They have tangible ships, with shape, that are capable of being stolen by the main kid. They are not pure energy. Effervescent, yes. Blue, yes. Ethereal, maybe. But pure energy? I don't believe it.

Planet Bob. At the end, when they recover the new planet and everything's good, the Drew Barrymore chick is like, "So what are you going to call [this planet]?" And the Matt Damon dude is, "How about... Bob." And Drew is like "Bob?! You can't call a planet Bob," and Matt's all, "Oh, so now you're the king of Bob?" Call me a prissy loser, but I kinda liked that. I know I was supposed to think it was stupid, but I'm gonna admit it, I liked it. Also, at that point, they almost made out, but then they didn't. Lame! The world needs more making out.