I really really really wanted to love the movie Rubber. I don’t think it’s about prophylaxis. But maybe it is… Hmmmmm.
It’s about an worn out tire from the side of the road that goes on a killing spree. Kind of like Natural Born Killers, but not really.
Near the beginning this guy looks straight into the camera and talks about pointlessness in movies. How some of the main or best parts of a movie are actually pointless.
As a fan of Harry Nilsson, I tend to think that everything has a Point! so I sorta took issue with this. Or at least I didn’t take it at face value. I really don’t think that the movie is about not having a point. I think it’s much, much more than that.
There is pretty much no suspense or chills in the movie, despite it ostensibly being a horror show. The photography is great! The depth of field is often very tight, letting just a little bit of the tread be in focus… And the self-actualization of the tire is a thing to behold.It really is a character.
It was filmed in the California desert, somewhere near Joshua Tree, so the landscapes are awesome.
Ultimately it’s a comedy. My wife laughed out loud when a car hit a chair and it collapsed into a pile of sticks. The chair, that is. It’s the one that collapsed.
Some people would say that the movie needs more pointless moments like that, to be more funny or more absurd or weirder. I would be in their camp, but I still don’t think that stuff is pointless. It’s a movie about movies, and I love the ending.
It’s a genre movie. One of its main points is that a real turkey can kill off a genre’s entire audience. And a bad ending can turn off your only fan. But it just takes 1 happy viewer to justify a sequel. So, yeah, this movie makes a lotta points if you can just read thru the visual puns and metaphorical stuff.
It kinda has a similar vibe to The Movie Hero. But it’s not a romantic comedy in that sense.
The problem is, I can’t really recommend this movie to anybody else. I don’t think that any of your are cool enough to get it. I certainly know that I’m not cool enough to get it. But I got some of it. And I wish that there had been more of it to get, whatever it is.
