April 12, 2019

WARNING: Spoiler’s Included: Alright so it’s the day before February Vacation ’93. The popular-ish girls in my 9th grade class are talking about going to see Untamed Heart over break. I’m thinking...hey...I enjoy a night out at the cinema; maybe these ladies will invite me and my friends and we’ll BE friends. Alas, these are the young ladies who shout “Tebo es muy feo!” when I walk by their Spanish class. This invitation never arrives. Instead I go see Groundhog Day with my dad...so I considered myself the winner in this particular situation. I wasn’t all cheesed off or nothin’...but I TOTALLY WON, RIGHT!? Tell me!!! I’m just messin’ around. I didn’t really care about not getting invited to go see Untamed Heart. But then I saw a copy of it at the thrift store the other day and thought...shit...what if it’s actually better than Groundhog Day?? So I decided to drop the 50 cents to find out. I mean...I don’t know, y’all--this is a friggin’ bizarre movie. What happens is this: we open at an penguin-run orphanage back in the day where an anonymous young boy finds himself shunned by the other orphans ‘cuz he has a bum ticker. We know it’s back in the day because these scenes are filmed in black and white. We know the boy has a bum ticker because the nuns listen to his heart with a stethoscope and then shoot each other looks of “oh shit, sisters!” I say give the kid some Crestor and send him on his way but apparently this orphanage’s medical supplies are limited to a cotton swab, a bottle of Bactine, and the aforementioned stethoscope. No one wants to adopt a kid with a janky corazon, you dig? He keeps dropping dead but then another orphan who is totally Pete Campbell from Mad Men shakes him and he comes back to life. This entire opening sequence is scored by a solo piano version of the song “Nature Boy”...which makes it all feel as serious as a, you know, heart attack. So there’s all of that....but suddenly we find ourselves in early ‘90‘s Minneapolis. We know it is the early 90’s because “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega (the DNA remix!) plays on the soundtrack. You know the one--”da da da duh...duh da da da duh.” Good luck getting that hook out of your head! Anyway...this gal comes tearing ass home from her waitressing shift and and starts putting her face on for a date. Her boyfriend shows up in a dumpy old pick-up truck and is totally unhandsome and like 45 years-old. She’s all “are you ready for the hahhhhky game?” (her accent in this movie veers wildly from Brooklyn to Minnesota...sometimes in the same sentence). The boyfriend is all “yeahhhh I think we should start seein‘ other people.” I throw my first bullshit flag on this movie. This guy is some chooch and Caroline is Marisa Tomei! As in Ms MONA LISA VITO, y’all! As in her biological clock is tickin‘ like THIS! But yeah...he dumps her anyway...and she’s wicked bummed. She goes to work at some 24-hour diner where the servers are allowed to sit in the dining room and just rip butts all night. Especially her co-worker and best friend Rosie Perez. She is never shown without a lit cigarette in hand. The diner’s busboy, Adam, is domestic abuse enthusiast and biter of police officers Christian Slater. He is completely non-verbal and will not speak until approximately halfway through the movie. Maybe if he spoke he could’ve told us that he’s the cardiac kid from the beginning of the movie but for now we’ll just have to assume that he is. So Caroline is on her shift when some drunk assholes start banging on the diner’s cigarette machine. She tells them that she owns the machine and asks them to stop. First off--what kind of restaurant allows their employees to bring their own vending machines to work?? Second--I’m totally going to ask my bosses if I can set up a cigarette machine at Vee Vee. It’d be like, “can I have a look at your vegan/gluten free menu? And also have a pack of Newport Lite 100’s? Thanks.” Anyway...the drunk assholes make some lewd comments at Caroline and I start to feel like they are going to end up attacking her at some point very soon. Speaking of lewd comments--the manager tells Rosie Perez to stop rippin’ butts and get back to work and she says “Ugh...you are like wet sand in my underwear!” Dayyyum! After her shift Caroline walks home alone and...sure enough...the drunk assholes from the bar show up and try to rape her. This sequence goes on forever and is just terrible. The bigger guy pins Caroline onto the ground and knocks her unconscious but then BAM! our man Adam appears from out of nowhere with a 2x4 and tunes these rapists UP! He carries Caroline home and lays her on her front porch and we’re so happy he was WAIT HOW DOES HE KNOW WHERE SHE LIVES!??? She’s thinking the same thing when she wakes up and sees dude standing there! She takes a couple of mental health days but when she returns to the diner she’s like “Adam dude...how the eff you know where I live.” He does his whole “I don’t know how to use my words routine” for a bit longer but then finally starts to speak. Tells her he follows her home every night to make sure she’s safe. She immediately tells her boss that the busboy is stalking her and that he needs to fire him ASAP. JUST KIDDING! She thanks him and kisses him on the friggin’ mouth! She tells him that her entire life is like a 3 Stooges episode in Spanish. I have no idea what that means but I feel like it might definitely be racist. Caroline tells Rosie Perez that she might be interested in Adam. Perez tells Caroline that she thinks Adam looks like a tuna and the he has monkey parts inside of his body. Then they call each other “bitch” and “ho” and playfully fight with fly swatters until Caroline is distracted by the sight of a shirtless Adam in the locker room. Dude’s chest is TORE UP with scars! So he IS the kid from the beginning of the movie! Glad that’s finally clear. So basically Rosie Perez is suggesting that Adam’s heart came from a baboon. You want to know what else? The original title of this flick was Baboon Heart! That’s a boss ass name for a movie...even this one. Caroline lets Adam take her back to his dank, windowless basement apartment where she finds pictures of herself taped to his fridge (which is full of severed heads and ice cream) and immediately gets up outta there with the quickness. The next morning she wakes up to find that Adam has broken into her house...into her BEDROOM...and set up a Christmas tree at the foot of her bed while she slept. She immediately calls the police and has Adam arrested for felony B&E and files a restraining order. Just kidding AGAIN! She rolls around in her undies and giggles with delight. Then...THEN...she brings Adam a plate of cookies!!!! I mean...who are we supposed to be rooting for in this movie? Adam invites her in and offers to play her some cuts from his vinyl collection. That’s pretty cool...not a lot of dudes trucking around vinyl in the 90’s. I’m thinking he’s an XTC guy. Maybe Elvis Costello or the Buzzcocks. NOPE...he throws on “Nature Boy.” Always gets ‘em dancing in the aisles, that tune. She asks Adam about the monkey parts and he tells this crackers crazy story about how he came to have the heart of a baboon. He believes this because the nuns told him so. Hey, the nuns told me I was about as funny as a plague of boils and LOOK AT ME NOW! Caroline takes Adam to her house to give him a haircut and dude goes right for boob. She takes him upstairs and starts to get undressed but Adam starts to make low, guttural, monkey sounds and creams in his shorts and starts weeping like baby. Nice going, Buzz Killington. So they’re dating now and it’s whatever whatever but then the rapists show up at the diner and stick a blade in Adam. He survives thank gawd but the doctors tell Caroline that he has the heart of an 85 year-old man (a baboon is not mentioned) but that he’ll be fine with a some treatment and, eventually, a heart transplant. Grah hah hah I wonder if this diner’s health insurance package covers heart transplants. It doesn’t matter because Adam refuses to even consider a transplant. His reasoning: if he has a different heart he won’t be able to love Caroline the same way. She’s all like “Hey numb nuts...you know that people don’t love with their actual hearts, right?” This exchange is actually supposed to be very sweet....but I don’t know, folks...this guy is dumb as rocks...and a stalker to boot. So he opts to do nothing about his shitty heart. Instead there’s a long happy relationship montage and all of that happy horse shit. Caroline takes him to a hockey game for his birthday even though he expressly stated that he does not like hockey earlier in the film. At the game he catches a puck (yuh right) and they suck face a ton. This is all well and good but on the drive home from the game Adam drops dead in the car...which is less good. I mean...they told him he was gonna die! All he had to do is take some beta blockers and spend 30 minutes on the treadmill twice a week! But he chose not to. So really this movie is about how nothing good ever happens to Caroline until she hooks up with this mute stalker who promptly drops dead on her. What was the point of all of this?? Now homegirl is sad as SHIT. She returns to Adam’s apartment where she finds a gift that he’s left for her. It’s some of his favorite records. She puts one on and guess what it is?? NATURE BOY!!! Like he owns 100 copies of just that one song...and not even the Big Star version! She hysterically cry/laughs to herself and then the movie just ends. Jesus Christ, people. Oh wait--I promised a spoiler. Christian Slater in not actually Mr Robot...just a figment of Freddie Mercury’s imagination. There you go.