Checked out the new movie from James Franco, a kind of sci-fi Mad Max amalgam on a super low budget called (creatively) Future World. This is what happens when Franco and his friends get super lazy, dash together a script, and film in the desert on the cheap in abandoned locations that don’t need a lot of set decoration. And all this lazy, low-budget film-making shows.
At first, I thought this film was comparable to all those low-to-no budget Mad Max knockoffs from the early 80s. But that was giving the film too much credit… it is set in a Mad Max like world but all they could afford was a bunch of grungy dirt bikes… not a single hacked-together car. The flick is so low budget, they probably just borrowed some old dirt bikes, some stuntmen, and shot what they shot.
The movie takes place after some war or another where people now live hard-scramble lives and wear cobbled together biker gear and hazmat masks. Out hero named Prince (or perhaps he IS a prince… not sure) wants to save his mother who is generically sick (played by Lucy Liu) so he sets off to find… I dunno… some “paradise” where they have generic medicine to cure a generic illness. He runs into James Franco’s nasty teeth and his gang of bikers, Snoop Dogg and his neon whorehouse, Suki Waterhouse as a recommissioned sex robot (or something), and eventually Milla Jovovich as a psycho gang leader.
Which is where this rather bad film suddenly finds life. Milla Jovovich, of all people, brings a sudden, random spark to this flick. She’s having fun playing an off-kilter warlord with more energy than anyone else in the film has. The movie actually gets interesting – or a mild form of that word – when she’s on screen. Nothing that makes me recommend the movie but if you are a big fan of her, you might like it. I mean, there must be a crew of Resident Evil movie fans out there, right?!!?
Abnother random surprise… the film is actually shot well. The cameras can only do so much with the no-budget locations and unthrilling stunt work, but at least it’s done with some style. I suspect James Franco called in some favors and got a real crew together to film abandoned factories, tract homes, and other “sets” they stumbled across in the desert.
I’ve already written too much about this film. No reason to see it… but if you do, it’s in limited “I’m James Franco so I can get this released” release and on streaming via iTunes at least.
Score: 66