Witz Can't In Good Conscience Pick: American Gladiators

All I ever wanted to do was get my American Gladiators back. The Joust, the Nerf Gun Shooting Challenge, Hang Tough...loved em. The Red, The Blue, and the Gladiators, battling it out for glory. It was gold-- when I was younger. Unfortunately, like much of the 80's and 90's, when struck with the bright, eco-friendly fluorescent lights of today, what was once beautiful and nostalgic becomes awkward and ill advised. Gary Coleman, Vanilla Ice, Everlast, Gogurt, these are all examples we know of. Well, with the remake of American Gladiators on NBC, you can add it to the list.

The problem with new American Gladiators is that it lacks the rawness and sincerity of the original. I don't remember who the host of the original was, but now it's Hulk Hogan and Laila Ali, two alleged television personalities who are seemingly incapable of acting at even a reality tv show level. While I do love that the contestants get to reply with, "Well, Hulk Hogan, I just went out there and gave it my all," I find it distracting that Hulk Hogan can't even say, "Brother!" anymore without it sounding fake and scripted. He did it for 10+ years in the WWF, but somehow out of context, it feels awkward and depressing.

There's also a problem with the contestants. The contestants are organized into an Olympic Style bracket where they are competing for best Eliminator (final race event) times. From the one episode I saw, all the contestants are like 5'7'', weigh a buck-fifty, and are not only super enthusiastic about the show, but they believe they can defeat the ridiculously jacked gladiators. It's not that I don't want them to, it's just that I can't possibly believe that they weren't given a break when they do. There's no way a 250 pound sack of athletic muscle can't tackle a small asian child before he dunks a ball into a basket. And most of these guys are tech guys or women who are really into fitness-- by which they mean stretching and cycling. They can't form tackle. They can't climb shit or swing on rings, they can just pilate like a motherf$#*er. And yet sometimes they win. But they all have really really positive, often religiously inspired attitudes. The few times relevant competitors have played, i.e. firefighters, marine corps, body builder, they've lost, which is both confusing and deeply disturbing. Maybe we should have our Positive Thinking Spinners take a crack at Iraq.

Which brings us to the Gladiators-- the real heroes of the show. Only this time around, they aren't just jacked and applaudable, they're over the top goofy. One guy's name is Wolf and he has big wolfish side burns and long hair. I can't tell if his teeth are sharp or just white, but either way he howls, and it's the least convincing howl I've ever heard. It's like the Mitch Hedberg joke, "That's like working really hard your whole life to be a chef, and after you finally achieve it, somebody comes and says, 'Great -- can you farm?'" These gladiators are really stacked and athletic-- but then they make them act. Another guy looks like a plastic figure with overdone makeup, and at least two of the women look like porn stars with no interesting personalities at all. One woman's name is Stealth which makes no sense because American Gladiators has nothing to do with stealth, and another chick's name is Hellga. They had to show a sign when they announced her name so that we'd know it was spelled Hell-ga. When American Gladiators resorts to visual spelling puns you know it's time to move on. Finally, and most annoyingly, there's a gladiator named Militia, which we should talk about. Because a militia is a roughly thrown together town organization with the mission to protect its territory in times of need. These men are vaguely trained, live otherwise normal lives, and when called upon, bring more heart than skill. Is that an inspiring name for an American Gladiator? Then you see him and realize that someone was proooobably gonna call him "Gang-Banger" until NBC execs stepped in and said that was totally unacceptable. Here's the biggest problem with Militia. Laila Ali always announces him and says, "versus Militia," which EVERY SINGLE TIME sounds like she's saying Melissa with a slight lisp-- there's just no way around it. The gladiators are weak.

This leaves only the challenges. Joust is back, but really isn't interesting and probably never was. The gun thing is still sweet and worth watching. Some of the old games still exist and some new games are alright, but nothing else stands out. And then there's the Eliminator. The great finale of the show. Only it's not much of a finale at all. Instead of the showdown against gladiators like in the old show, there is essentially a 5 part course. You climb over a wall, dive into water and swim, you climb a rope net, then you go through a series of 3 elevated challenges including a hand bike, a balance beam, and a rolling spindle like thing. The problem here is that it's waaaay faster to just fall off these three challenges and walk to the ladder and climb back up than it is to furiously work a hand bike for 30 seconds. Then they have to climb up an inclined treadmill (going the wrong direction) and jump through foam bricks to win. Aside from the redundancy, blatant flaws with the course, and brevity of the challenge, there's one thing glaringly missing from the finale-- oh yeah-- GLADIATORS! They are nowhere to be seen! Why would you not place your standout characters in the finale of your show?? The show is NAMED American Gladiators, but in the last event you just have two mediocre athletes slowly battling each other and fatigue? When one finishes, they don't even wait for the other to finish before interviewing the winner. That's how little they care about these competitors.

Overall, the new show feels tremendously like Spike TV's Most Extreme Challenge, and I can't help but feel like somewhere in Japan, American Gladiators is being dubbed over with Japanese voices, mocking our antics while high school and college kids laugh their asses off at "Wolf" and "Militia" and "Venom" and the puny, doofy Americans falling off hand bikes and diving through foam bricks. Sorry American Gladiators, you no longer protect our nation-- you do it harm.


INSTEAD, WITZ TOTALLY PICKZ: Shoot Em Up.

I don't even know how to describe this movie. Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti square off in the action movie that self-consciously and deliberately comments on its own action movie-ness. Nothing about this movie is metaphorical, and when it verges on being symbolic, they state the symbolism, thereby losing one form of artsy and gaining another. It's like the movie Crank, but with a more ambitious directing style. It feels like Tarantino paying someone to purposefully make a Tarantino film. And it would suck if it wasn't perfectly done. Each and every scene escalates, starting off with Clive Owen SHOOTING an umbilical cord off to deliver a baby, and ending with a tremendous over the top battle. Every scene revolves (aha) around guns and violence and literally declares, "Violence is one of the most fun things to watch." Hopefully, it's not a commentary on me when I say that the film proves its thesis, and by doing so, by packing in so much COOL violence and excessive gunplay, actually might end up being one of the most ANTI-GUN, ANTI-VIOLENCE movies of all time. The film is satire, but not pretentious satire-- honest satire. "Here is what you want to see, we all know we like it, come and watch it and let's have fun," the movie says. You can't say, "I didn't like the plot," because who cares? You can't say, "The characters weren't believable," because no kidding. The acting was spot on, the writing was perfect. What they made you focus on was the violence and the characters creating the violence. People and guns. Chekov once said, "If you see a gun over the mantle in act one, it must go off by Act 3." Well Shoot Em Up has one gun on the mantle in act one and shoots off about 1,000 by Act 3. Tremendous.

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