Million Monkey Theater
Slipstream (1989)
Slipstream is my second foray into the world of post-apocalyptic wastelands (the first was the lame In the Year 2889), and a fairly odd duck of a movie by any standards. Bristling with A-list actors and some impressive settings and props, it's nevertheless been widely dismissed as laughable and idiotic. Released first in Europe, it was so badly received, in fact, that it was never picked up by an American distributor, and so died a sad death on the dusty rental shelves of Belgian and Scottish video stores. In 2003, however, it ended up on public domain DVD, thanks to Brentwood Home Video, and I was able to see it finally. And, what do you know, it wasn't that bad.
And now on to our show...
Sometime in the near future, man's mistreatment of Mother Nature finally gets the better of him. An event known as the "Convergence" occurs, wherein earthquakes and hurricanes ravage the planet, continents split, oceans roll and people groups are scattered and mingled. New global weather patterns create the "slipstream", a seemingly planet-wide wind band, kind of like the jetstream, but only much lower.
Survivors have retreated to safer areas, or have reverted to tenth-century lifestyles of hunting and gathering and living in caves. Much old technology exists, and there's clearly a centralized government somewhere that makes laws and enforces them, but generally the land is pretty insular. What government survives we never know, but some apparatus far away from what we see in our movie, the underpopulated hinterlands and their wretchedly poor vagabond inhabitants.
The date is maybe the year 2025, though that's a total guess. There's nothing in this movie (other than an android) that suggests any time deeper into the future. Most props, vehicles, guns, machinery, technology (except the android), and fashions, are all roughly late 1980s vintage (the film itself was made in 1989). So, my guess is that the "Convergence" happened around 2005 or so, and just some twenty years have passed since then. Very little internal dialogue supports this guess, but everything you see and hear hints that 2025 is probably as good a guess as any.
This "slipstream" is almost metaphorical in its purpose, the mythical road to paradise, the fabled Route 66 in the air. The exact meteorological physics of it are dicey to say the least, but to quibble about such details is to miss the subtle beauty of something as seemingly benign as the wind having such as pivotal role in the lives of the people in our film's world. The wind sustains them, the wind destroys them, the wind has become the symbol of the gross indiscretions of the past and the cleansing purifier of the future.
One line hints that the slipstream flows west, and along it great social upheavals have taken place. Though we only get oblique but tantalizing clues, we can assume that the frequent windstorms have made traditional agriculture in these areas nearly impossible, forcing people to either adapt, move to better protected areas, or to die from starvation.
Our story begins with the recapture of an escaped felon by a pair of bounty hunters working for the government.
The bounty hunters, a man named Tasker and a woman named Belitski, are a coldly efficient team of hired killers and trackers. They fly around in a neat airplane, which is actually a rare Brooklands Aerospace Optica OA-7, a single-engined turbofan-powered utility aircraft with a bulbous cockpit and a mid-mounted engine. I recently found one for sale on the internet for just $175,000!
The Optica.
Tasker is played by none other than 38-year old Mark Hamill(yes, Luke Skywalker!). Hamill does a very capable job in our movie, even if he does seem to want to be Han Solo, a role he was denied in Star Wars. His Tasker character is gruff, violent and acerbic, though shot through with a firm conviction for the rule of law and order and even strongly hinted-at Christian religious convictions. His first really meaty performance since 1983's Return of the Jedi, Hamill does what I consider to be a very good job. You may ask yourself, why Slipstream for his acting return? Well, I'd guess it has to do with long-time friend and producer Gary Kurtz, who had the same job on both Episode IV and V.
Tasker, looking all badass.
His partner Belitski is played by 27-year old Englishwoman Kitty Aldridge, a relatively unknown actress. Belitski is a tallish woman with cropped short blonde hair and a long nose. She seems to be a junior bounty hunter, maybe even a trainee, and certainly getting tired of this line of work. Her relationship with Tasker is professional, he calls the shots and she backs him up, but you can tell that Tasker can be overbearing at times, which grates on her nerves.
Belitski.
We open as the escapee runs through the open scrubland, pursued by the buzzing plane at low altitude. They land and chase him on foot, and catch him soon with a grappling hook shot through his arm! Hmm...Mark Hamill using a grappling hook shot out of a small tube...nope, haven't seen that before. So they recapture the felon, who really seems calm and sedate for being an escaped murderer and all and having a hook imbedded in his forearm, and stick him in a cage in the back of the plane and take off.
Cary Grant runs from th...wait, I mean, the convict runs from the plane.
They land in a nearby "airport", which looks like it used to be a small county airfield with the standard PA treatment given (lots of tarps, empty oil drums, sandbags, open firepits, trash strewn about, and filthy extras paid a few bucks to stand around and look grungy and bothered). There are a few other small planes here, as well as some ultralights and balloons, and a good-sized diner catering to the flight crowd.
The diner is your typical greasy spoon, complete with cantankerous cook and waitress with a heart of gold. It's a late '80s Star Wars cantina scene, with scruffy pilots and grimy mechanics chatting and eating french fries while The Police plays in the background. Tasker and the handcuffed convict enter and sit for a sandwich and some coffee. The convict, I should note is dressed in a nice well-tailored three piece suit and tie, which really is a neat touch.
The diner's cook and waitress. Fishnet t-shirts are all the rage in the future.
One patron in particular we need to meet. His name is Matt, and he appears to be a regular customer and a smalltime two-bit petty crook/salesman. He has a bag full of salvaged electronics and even a grenade (!) that he tries sell or trade to anyone who looks gullible.
Matt is played by 34-year old Bill Paxton, forever known for being the neurotic whiney Private Hudson from Aliens. The choice of Paxton for this role is without a doubt the main reason for this movie's ultimate box office and critical failure. The Matt character was written as a world-weary, wise-cracking survivor, a chunky mixture of greed, compassion, anger, fear, desperation and a starry-eyed optimism for the uncertain future. Sadly, however, Paxton seems to want to channel Mel Gibson's character from Lethal Weapon, with more emphasis on sophomoric humor and forced machismo than humanity and depth. But, where Gibson had legitimate charisma and screen presence to make his character work, Paxton is about two steps below him in thespian skills, and his character in our movie reflects that. He does have Gibson-esque hair, though.
"That's it, man. Game over, man. Game over!"
Matt's latest mistake is trying to sell that illegal grenade to Tasker, who confiscates the entire bag of goods and sends Matt off with a stern warning to keep his nose clean. Matt sulks off to another table, where someone mentions that the convict has a huge reward on his head down in "the settlement". What settlement we never learn, but it can just be thought of as the Oz at the end of the Yellow Brick Road, the place where everything is better and brighter and where convicts are locked up or shot for their crimes.
The mention of a reward sets off alarms in Matt's fuzzy, white-man's afro head. He needs money badly, and his trading business was just shut down by Tasker, so the lure of claiming that bounty for himself is too great to ignore. The problem is getting the convict away from the bounty hunters, both of whom seem to be well-armed and unpleasant to deal with.
Matt waits until they exit the diner and head for their plane and then makes his move. With pistol drawn, he kidnaps the convict and hauls him off to his own small ultralight plane. During all that, however, he takes a "poison dart" in the chest. Tasker offers to trade the antidote for the convict, but Matt is not altogether convinced that the poison is real and passes on the offer. The running joke the rest of the film is Matt wondering if there really was poison in that dart and how long he has to life.
"Dude, you just shot me with this?"
Away they flee, soon to be followed by the bounty hunters and the chase is on. Slipstream is, in its heart and thematic flow, a road movie. We have one pair pursuing another pair, a felon and the law, a rebel and a pretty girl, all classic ingredients of a grindhouse road movie. Just substitute a 1969 Camaro for the ultralight and replace the barren Turkish landscape with the equally barren wastes of western Arizona and we would have just about the same movie.
So, off they go, entering the slipstream, which here seems to flow along close enough to the ground to allow for some X-Box racer-style CGI shots of them zipping through canyons and around rocky spires. The real-life scenery shots are impressive as always, if the musical score that accompanies them less so.
As we fly along, we get to know our fugitive a little better. The actor is the versatile 44-year old Bob Peck, a very tall Englishman who looks a bit like Daniel Craig and who is probably best known as the big game hunter Muldoon from Jurassic Park. His actual name is never mentioned, but Matt gives him the name "Byron" after mishearing him quoting that poet from the back seat of the ultralight. The Byron character is the highlight of this film, in my opinion, besting even the dramatically stark scenery. By miles and miles, Peck is a far superior actor to anyone else in our cast, a classically-trained Shakespearean veteran with a wide range of expressions and feelings. He infuses his character with a wonderfully appealing mix of British stuffiness, strong-hearted compassion, and understated humor.
Byron.
Byron is, most astoundingly, an android! Yes, just like in Bladerunner, or more accurately just like Data from Star Trek, which was popular on US television at the time. He's indestructible, highly cultured, neatly attired and deeply conflicted about his place in the world and what it means to be "non-human" and "human". In more ways than one he echoes Data, even down to his slicked back hairstyle and perfect English. His crime is never explicitly stated, but we get hints to say that he let his previous master die instead of trying to save him, though this was at his master's request we later learn.
Matt shows his charming, witty side here, trying to be the tough fighter for Byron's sake, but not pulling it off well. Matt is too much the joker, too much the funny man to be taken seriously as a dangerous kidnapper, and Byron picks up on this. Byron has no desire to escape, however, as his programming won't allow it. Matt is content to bluster and joke and worry that maybe that really was a poison dart after all. In one of the better scenes, he pulls out a CD (yes, they still use these in the future) and does what every teenage boy has done before, look at his reflection in the disk.
Checking for tongue fur before the prom.
As they fly along we get to see a number of long, drawn-out helicopter shots of the rugged land. The scenery for this movie is indeed breathtaking in both its scope and desolation. Much of this movie was filmed in the wild mountains of the Cappadocia region of southeastern Turkey, an area of rugged rocky ridges and sheltered river valleys. It reminds me of New Zealand, as the Lord of the Rings movies can attest. For centuries, the locals have lived in caves dug into the hillsides, a perfect setting for a post-apocalypse movie. It seems that most of the extras we see in the scattered hamlets are local residents, paid to basically do what they normally do.
The wild villages of Turkey. I don't see a Starbucks.
First step is a small brutally shabby cave-village where Matt lays his head and keeps his stuff. This is actually a local Turkish village, with all the locals as background extras and some English-speaking bit part actors serving as friends of Matt's. Amongst them is a burly man who is the local merchant in the village, played by an excellently-cast Robbie Coltrane.
Robbie Coltrane in the tub! With a toy lobster! Really!
Here Matt pretty much packs all his earthly belongings in a sack and says his goodbyes. His plan is to not come back here after collecting the reward money. If he's saddened by leaving, he doesn't show it, or at least hides it well under that goofass laugh of his. And if any of his "friends" are going to miss him, they keep it under wraps as well. I'm sure his attitude has gotten on other peoples' nerves as it has mine.
Byron, meanwhile, has slipped out to "heal" a young blind boy of his cataracts! How exactly he does this is not explained, but I'm sure that Data could have done the same thing. The townspeople are amazed by Byron, as is Matt a little, and he gathers quite an appreciative crowd. It seems that Byron's last master was a sickly old man, so acting as doctor was one of his jobs. Throughout this movie, Byron shows us a strong willingness and desire to help people in any way that he can, a truly admirable quality to have, even for an android.
A strange interlude is next, leaving Matt and Byron for a minute and reconnecting with the bounty hunters. Tasker and Belitski are out in the foothills astride a narrow horse path. Along it are traveling a group of men from the cave-village from the previous scene, led by Coltrane, and they can be best called smugglers, as they are carrying contraband poppy seeds (!) which are said to be a fortune on the black market. After Matt left in his ultralight, I assume, some of the men headed off on a trading mission on horseback. I also assume that the bounty hunters are here because they were moving in on Byron when they came across the smugglers. Intercepted by Tasker, the group tries to shoot its way out of trouble with the law. As Tasker and Belitski have the high ground and are much better shots, the battle is short and bloody, and ends with all the villagers dead.
In a strange show of compassion, Tasker and Belitski bury the dead smugglers under rock cairns, showing enough respect to lay them face up. We can see here that Belitski is getting burned out with the constant violence and death associated with her job. Tasker, however, still remains loyal to the law, going so far as to continue to send in incident reports on his nifty laptop computer.
Not so futuristic looking, eh?
Next up on our road trip is an isolated commune of "Wind Worshippers", nomadic, anti-technology wanderers who have a deep religious connection to the slipstream. These sorts of "cults" do appear in regions following massive natural disasters, an almost instinctive reaction to events so insanely horrible that they defy conventional explanations and often fall into the hazy realm of religion and redemption. You need to go no further than the post-Black Death cults in Medieval Europe for similar examples.
This particular group was just attacked by a band of marauders when Matt and Byron arrive. Bodies lie everywhere, some dead, some badly wounded, fires burn and empty shell casings litter the rocky ground. While Matt is surrounded by men, who apparently are angry enough from the raid to just tie him up and ask questions later, Byron's skills as healer are immediately put to use.
This group's leader is a scruffy long-haired old man, surprisingly played by the legendary Ben Kingsley (seriously, all these awesome household names in this movie, and it still couldn't even find a US distributor?). Unfortunately, Kingsley is badly injured, lying under a large millstone, which somehow has ended up crossways on top of him. Byron easily lifts the stone and tends to the man's wounds. In a truly inventive bit, he pulls one of his artificial hairs out of his head, stretches the monofiliment to several times its normal length, and uses it to stitch up an open cut. Rambo would be so proud!
Yanni...I mean, Kingsley says good bye to the cruel world.
Kingsley isn't going to make it, however, mostly because he needs to make one of those long drawn-out overly philosophical death monologues that only people in movies make (in real life people usually just say "Arg!"). He waxes about the wind, about God, and about impermanence of this earthly life and all that. He also seems to somehow sense that Byron is not human, though he's less angry than ironic over this.
There's a woman here, a red-haired beauty named Ariel, who seems to be a recent convert to the cult. She's played by an overmatched Eleanor David, and she was another poor choice of actress for what will turn out to be an important part. With Kingsley dead, Ariel has lost her willingness to stay with the Wind Worshippers, and will later look to Matt and Byron to offer her a way out.
Ariel.
Having discovered that Byron is an android, albeit a very helpful and friendly android, and being so Amish-like opposed to the technology of the old world that brought about the catastrophe of the Convergence, the Wind Worshippers decide to sacrifice Byron to the wind. Nice, the guy just appeared out of nowhere and helped save several of your peoples' lives, out of sheer altruism no less, and now you are going to essentially crucify him.
Just then, Tasker and Belitski show up, having traced the homing signal here (oh, yeah, Byron has a homing beacon in him). They arrive in the teeth of a vicious windstorm, one with searing gale-force hurricane winds. Byron on his kite is whipped about violently, though he doesn't seem to mind, and getting him back down is going to be a problem. Against his better judgment, Tasker agrees to let Matt help him get Byron back, in exchange for the antidote.
Byron's kite, also one of the movie's better ideas.
Under the cover of darkness and the raging windstorm, Matt hooks a carabineer to the tether holding the kite, and then pops a small parachute (from the bounty hunter's plane). Jerked into the air, he zips up the tether, and timing it just right, dumps the chute and latches onto the kite's tubular metal frame. Byron, slightly bemused despite his circumstances, greets him drolly with "Hello.".
Once up on the kite, however, Matt has other ideas. He decides to take his chances with the wind and works to cut the tether loose. Belitski, seeing this from below, hooks up and pops her own chute, racing up to stop him. She makes it to the kite alright, but has little time to do anything before the tether snaps and the kite is tossed violently downstream, everyone aboard hanging on for dear life. It doesn't get very far, however, before smacking into a canyon wall shattering, spilling Matt, Belitski and Byron out on the ground.
Caught exposed in the hurricane windstorm, it doesn't look good for the humans. Luckily for them, Byron is unfazed by the wind and is able to pick them up and lead them to the safety of a cave to wait out the storm. Byron even goes back out to look for Tasker, who is missing himself, but only finds Ariel, who for some reason is out in the windstorm wandering around.
Meanwhile, we get the first hints of "something deeper" between Matt and Belitski. She's fed up with the bounty hunter life, and probably more fed up with Tasker's egotistical gruffness, and sees in the charming, if a bit scuzzy, Matt a way out. For his part, he's more than likely just looking for a cheap lay, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he's actually attracted to Belitski as a person.
A bit more on Matt here, just to soften his character up a little in light of him slowly becoming our romantic lead. It seems he harbors a secret dream to design and build balloons for travel along the slipstream. All his petty crimes and his two-bit salesmanship have the eventual goal of saving enough money to open a balloon shop somewhere downstream. You can tell that Belitski is intrigued by this idea, but isn't sure enough about Matt to really let it show. We'll have to watch these two. But first, Belitski goes back out into the storm, which is by now abated, to look for Tasker.
Ah, love's sweet sting.
Given another head start, Matt takes Byron to the ultralight again. This time, however, Ariel insists on coming along. She has developed a crush of her own, on Byron, and has no reason to stay with the Wind Worshippers. Her home is downstream from here, and she offers it as a place to refuel and resupply. While Matt isn't too happy about having another passenger, he realizes that she can get him access to supplies he needs to finish the journey.
But first, they have to repair the ultralight, which they discover to their dismay that the Wind Worshippers have damaged in some fanatical attack on the ethereal concept of "all technology is bad". Byron is quite handy, however, and between he and Matt they get the plane fixed up as best they can, or at least make it airworthy. The cockpit only sits two, so Byron is lashed to the roof with ropes!
Off they go, winging downstream. They are in the air quite some time, when suddenly, Matt's jury-rigged and well-worn ultralight gives up the ghost. Perhaps do to the damage the Wind Worshippers caused, or perhaps the extra weight of Ariel, or just because the script says so, the plane piles it in. Nobody is hurt (surprisingly) but the plane is now a total loss.
So off they go, walking single file through a barren river valley, headed towards Ariel's home village. Ok, that's it then, our movie is over. We end ambiguously, with Matt, Ariel and Byron on foot, trekking towards presumed safety and succor. Thanks for reading and enjoy your day.
A great way to end our movie.
The end.
Hmm...what? It's not over? It's not even close to being over? What? Err...ok, fine! So, it's not over! There, are you happy now?
Our movie, which until now had been fairly entertaining or at least interesting, now goes to hell. Veering crazily from our established and effective PA road movie format, we grind to a muddled halt as we reach Ariel's underground village.
The movie wants us to believe that smack in the middle of this barren, empty wasteland is a huge, multi-leveled, internally powered, underground city! Filmed in what is most certainly a museum in England, artistically draped with tarps and fake rocks and filmed through a dusty filter, and populated with an anachronistic group of hedonistic, baroque, and impeccably British men and women. Like stereotypical after-the-bomb survivors in a deep shelter, these people have forsaken the surface world, with all its troubles and dangers, for the safety and stability of self-contained underground living.
With lots of free time on their hands, the people have fallen into the sort of Victorian, hedonistic, swingers' life that wealth and boredom tends to breed. They drink, they carouse, they throw elaborate ballroom parties, they wear tuxedoes and frilly dresses, and they convince themselves that this sort of existence is preferable to living on the surface (which it really is).
All well and good, but this subplot has absolutely zero place in our hitherto grimy post-apocalypse road movie! It's as if the script was lost in a trailer fire halfway through shooting and they used some other screenplay, one set in 1880s London and undoubtedly based on some excruciatingly pretentious Jane Austin novel, to finish the film. Only with a few minutes left does the film swerve drunkenly back to our PA road movie theme, but by then the vast majority of the audience has either opened their veins and resigned themselves to the blessed release of sweet death, or have thrown something heavy through the television and screamed havoc to the vile men who committed this travesty of filmmaking. Seriously, fully 25 minutes of our film are taken up with this.
Is this a PA movie?
Anyway, in they go and Byron immediately takes a shining to all the dusty statues, preserved paintings and the fully-stocked library. Being an intellectual, well-read android, this place is nirvana for him and you can just see his entire personality change rapidly. It's as if he has finally been freed from his past life and given a new lease on his life. Here he can read Tennyson, dance to Bach and drink French wine, and for once feel like he belongs.
And he's in love! There's a scene in the city's "nature preserve", a museum display of stuffed grassland animals and fake plants, where Byron learns the complicated and confusing joys of wooing the equally-smitten Ariel. Suffice to say, much like Star Trek's Data and his own furtive attempts at love, Byron stumbles through this new emotion, helped ably by an understanding Ariel. There's some biting (really) and some growling (seriously) and in the end they snuggle up for the night amongst the ferns and reeds of a wildebeest display (no joke). That night, for the first time ever, and in seeming violation of the laws of robotics, Byron dreams.
For his part, Matt is more interested in the narcissistic free-love orgies that seem to go on all night, every night. He hooks up with a pretty blonde girl, who is just bored enough with her cloistered life to make for a spicy lover. We even get a bit of soft core porn, which, while nice to see, really doesn't seem to fit into the theme of our movie. But all movies have to have at least one gratuitous half-nekkid lady scene in them.
You knew this was coming.
Finally coming to the realization that Byron is more human than most of the humans out there, Matt does the right thing and permits Byron to go free. Byron is happy about this, he really didn't want to go to jail, but he would rather stay here in the underground city than leave. He has found his purpose here, surrounded both by the trappings of a sophisticated and literate life, and with his new love Ariel.
Ah, but all this asinine frivolity and fluffy nonsense can't last forever, we have us a post-apocalyptic road movie to wrap up here! Tasker and Belitski have finally tracked them to this underground city, and Tasker is now pissed off enough not to settle for anything less than success this time.
Tasker barges into the sitting room, which is crowded with well-dressed leaders, all coincidently talking about what to do with Byron and Matt. Ariel is also here, trying in vain to defend their presence (mostly Byron's) to the skeptical and overtly xenophobic leaders. Tasker's appearance, gun drawn and face set, decides the question. Some men go down to fetch Byron and bring him up.
Tasker is not happy, and he has a really big gun.
Meanwhile, Belitski has encountered Matt down in the depths of the city. Belitski casually pulls out a pistol and shoots Matt with another dart! Matt, understandably angry, smacks her out cold. He takes her to his room and handcuffs her to the bed before she wakes up. She berates him for being an idiot, that dart held the antidote. Ah, so that really was a poison dart that Tasker hit him with way back at the airfield!
Matt softens to Belitski now, realizing that she just saved his life when she really didn't have to, and clearly in opposition to her boss Tasker. From this moment on, Belitski will have no contact with Tasker, and has for all intents and purposes, quit her job to be with Matt. Despite this, Matt leaves her cuffed down there while he goes up to see about Tasker. But first he gives her a rough forced kiss that Belitski doesn't seem to appreciate at the time, but probably seals the deal for them romantically.
Seriously, this isn't Mel Gibson?
Upstairs, a confrontation in the sitting room develops quickly, with Tasker trying to take Byron into custody while Ariel attempts to stop him. Matt shows up during this, with Belitski's shotgun. Words are said, shots are fired, women screen and men rush about. In the end, Matt is injured when his shotgun is shot out of his hands, and poor doomed Ariel lies dying, mortally wounded by an accidental pistol round from Tasker's gun.
Everything then stops, as the death of this innocent woman seems to shock everyone (including Tasker) back to reality. Byron cradles the dying Ariel, whose only words are "Are you alright?" before she expires. Tasker, perhaps more ashamed than anything of all the carnage that this simple prisoner transfer has become, simply walks out, leaving Byron and even Belitski.
Bob Peck is an awesome actor.
Tasker clearly is done with this whole mess and just wants to leave and go back to where ever he's from. He walks topside to where the plane is parked and prepares to leave. But then he notices a man walking towards him from the direction of the underground city. It's Byron, and he's coming to exact revenge on Tasker for the death of his one and only love.
Now, having an indestructible android after you is never a healthy thing, and Tasker knows it. He first tries his luck with a scoped Armalite rifle from about fifty yards, pegging Byron twice in the chest. Byron shrugs off the hits and keeps coming, inexorably like the Terminator. Tasker jumps in the plane and takes off, but Byron manages to jump onto the plane just as it leaves the ground!
The game is over now, Byron starts pulling wires and plugs out of the engine compartment, and then smashes his way into the cockpit to struggle with Tasker. The strangest thing then happens, just as it looks like Tasker is a goner, he reaches out softly and touches Byron's face and says "I have seen the face of God".
Hamill really is a good actor, despite the cheesy factor of the Star Wars films.
Byron's internal robotics rules against causing human harm now kick in (overriding those pesky revenge emotions) and he attempts to save them both. Unfortunately, Byron damaged the plane too badly and he's unable to keep it aloft. With a rushing boom, it crashes into a mountainside, breaking up into pieces as spent fuel mushrooms into a smoky fireball. Tasker is killed, of course, but Byron walks away from the wreckage, seemingly unhurt save for burned and tattered clothes.
Slipstream then ends well, which is welcome after that inexcusable lapse in the third act. Byron sets off on foot to find that robot paradise he dreams of, starting an odyssey of his own. Matt and Belitski are now a couple, and load up in Matt's repaired ultralight to travel downstream to start his balloon shop. All in all a pretty satisfying ending to a pretty good movie. I recommend this one.
The end.
Bonus! Some stats:
2: Number of plane crashes.
13: Number of people killed.
1: Number of cigarettes smoked.
0: Number of naughty girly nipples seen.
1: Number of ballroom dance numbers.
Written in May 2007 by Nathan Decker.
that's between you and the vengeful wrath of your personal god...