The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Justin Lin. 2006. ⚁

This movie starts off as a sci-fi thing: A grown man steps through freestanding security gates to get into… something…

… and there’s like other guys in funny costumes there too? His clothes seem to point to him being in his 40s, although he looks otherwise like he’s in his 30s. There are some strange towers in the background… are we in the year 2525? Are they going to the moon?

What kind of sci-fi is this!!?

No, he’s just a high school student, and the year is 2006. That’s him being in high school; in car shop.

*sigh*

Casting, dude.

High school student. 17.

Him being left back five or six times makes the whole thing make a lot more sense.

[ten minutes pass]

Well, actually more minutes passed, because I took a break to tidy up the kitchen, but now I’m back.

So there’s no characters from the first two movies in here?

It’s just about geriatric-looking teenager? In Tokyo?

I now looked up his age, and he’s just 24 here, which makes me ashamed of calling him geriatric, but it’s too much work editing out that shit. SORRY!!!

OH MY GOD HE”S IN JAPAN AND THEY EAT WEIRD STUFF OH MY etc.

[more time passes]

It’s kinda disturbing how the movie shifts from vibrant colours in some scenes to tightly colour-graded stuff (like in the car park) where everything is grey/teal.

It’s a better movie than the second one, but it’s a really really bad movie.

[the end]

This is a really bad movie, but it’s not quite as bad as the second one, I think? They are both really tedious, so perhaps it’s a mistake to rank this over that one…

The tomatoes agree that it’s marginally better. Which makes me suspicious, but anyway.

I wanted to watch something easy and stupid, but now I’m starting to regret watching Fast & Furious.

2 Fast 2 Furious. John Singleton. 2003. ⚀

I couldn’t get the 4K version of this to rip, so I’m watching it in (*gasp*) 2K.

Oh noes.

[two minutes pass]

This was made by John Singleton? The Boyz n the Hood guy? Hm.

Well, OK, the colours really pop. Not everything colour-graded to teal, but instead a riot of colours, and I really like that.

[fifteen minutes pass]

So the bleached blond(e) guy is here, but otherwise there’s no connection to the first movie? I mean… there’s cars and stuff. I guess that’s a connection.

I did like that street race, but it was, like… much more of a fantasy than in the first movie. The cars rear-ending each other and stuff? Nah. What I liked about the first movie was that it was pretty nerdy. This is more like er what’s the word oh yeah stupid.

[ten minutes pass]

I was so surprised by the first movie: It had a complex plot (sort of) and a bunch of interesting characters, and this… they took the blond(e) guy from the first movie and then… nothing else? It seemed like they were doing a whole little micro universe in that movie that could have been expanded, but instead this is just a lame … sting thing?

OK, I’m disappointed, but now I’m resetting: This isn’t The Fast and the Furious, but perhaps it can be stupid fun anyway?

[more minutes pass]

I can’t get over how boring this movie manages to make street car racing seem. And the rest… it’s beyond tedium: It’s all the worst of the worst “man talk”. You couldn’t parody this because it’s just all there already.

This is just a horrible, horrible movie. I’m so disappointed. I wanted a fun, easy-to-watch movie, and instead it’s just sheer torture.

Did Singleton even watch the first movie before making this one? It’s like somebody told him “It’s a about street racing… and there’s a cop…” and the took it from there, just imagining how bad that has to be from that recap.

How did the franchise bounce back from this?

I assumed that this was a lower-budget sequel to cash in, but the budget was almost twice as big. It’s… OK, I guess the sheer number of cars was expensive, so they put the budget on the screen, but they didn’t use any money on, like… anything else?

I do like the colours. The colours pop. Other than that, there’s nothing here.

Scary Movie 3. David Zucker. 2003. ⚁

Oh wow. This Scary Movie isn’t by the Wayans guy, but David Zucker? The guy who did all those 80s comedies that the first Scary Movies er referenced? That’s … so… meta?

Oh, wow^2. That’s a … scary career. He didn’t do anything of note between the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker movies and this?

[fifteen minutes pass]

This is so old-fashioned. Sure, the two Wayans movies were gross (so much puke), but they were snappy and funny. The joke density here is low, and so many of the jokes are things that should have been edited out. Typical example:

“I got a dream.” “What.” “To have a dream.”

That’s not even the beginning of a joke… it’s just… what gets left over when riffing.

Anna Faris is fun, but the rest are just there. This movie feels old and tired and kinda racist. And the paedophile Catholic priest jokes seem really horrific instead of funny.

[fifteen minutes pass]

So I guess they’re doing the Ring movies? Half the scenes are away from that premise, so it’s hard to tell. It’s not that there’s a lot of different skits, either, but they spend ten minutes on a lame rap battle thing?

[fifteen minutes pass]

Suddenly it’s kinda funny? How did that happen!?! Did I get more drunkener? I DID!

Anyway, it’s funny now.

[the end]

Well… OK. There’s the germ of a funny movie in here. There’s about twenty? minutes of this that’s worth watching. I mean, that’s funny. It’s such a train wreck that I don’t quite know how it ended up like this… it’s so unfunny at the start, and then gets amusing and then finally funny.

Hm… OK, now I’m watching the making-of documentary, and they explain that nothing from the original script ended up on the screen, and they rewrote things constantly, and what they wrote they filmed a couple days later. I guess that explains the disassociated nature of it all, and how so many of the jokes are underdeveloped. There’s so many scenes that have, like, a funny idea going? And then it’s… not as funny as it should have been?

And it looks like they filmed a lot that was cut out. Presumably those were even less funny than what survived — for instance, it looks like they did a whole Matrix thing? And almost not of that made it onto the screen.

And now I’m watching some of the cut scenes — alternate endings and everything. This one leans heavily into a Signs Shyamalan thing ending:

They spent a lot on this stuff that was never shown — and it’s really, really unfunny, so dropping it made sense.

I guess it’s just a sloppily made movie. And that kinda makes it even sadder.

I guess, for once, I agree with everybody.

I guess.