Torqued Off

I'm used to movies that have their own set of physical laws. If your story needs elves or warp drive or lots of singing, go for it. I don't mind. So I guess it's not fair that I was bothered by the fact that Torque took place in some alternate dimension full of motorcycle stunt riders. That's just part of the ground rules for the movie, like pretending that motorcycle gangs can afford a hundred thousand dollars per member for the fastest bikes in the world. That's fine, you know? In Torque-world, the bikers must have really good jobs or something.

It's kind of like South Park. I don't mean to imply that the movie is as unrealistic as South Park; it's far more unrealistic. It's more unrealistic than Duck Amuck. I've had fever dreams with more coherent plots. There are nursery rhymes with more fully-developed characters. Where was I?

Oh yeah. South Park. You know how in the South Park movie, there's so much obscenity and it's sometimes so astonishingly innovative in its vulgarity that you're just laughing in shock, thinking "I can't believe they just said or did that"? Right. There are times in Torque that are just so wildly not-of-this-world that I was laughing that anyone would think, even for a second, of putting them in a movie. Did you see that Simpsons episode where Homer and John Goodman fight a motorcycle duel and use the motorcycles like swords? Picture that being done in live action by women and then make it sillier. Really.

But like I say, I suppose I have to get past that. It's obvious not a movie that cares about being at all realistic in its portrayal of physical events. In an interesting coincidence, it's also not realistic in its portrayal of human beings. There is not a single moment where somebody does anything that makes any sense. If any of the actors asked what their motivation was, I assume they must have been told "You are completely out of touch with reality and believe somehow that this course of action will get you what you want even though nobody would ever do it. Besides, we have to match you up with the CGI for the next stunt." The only performance I enjoyed was Ice Cube, who was hilarious. Nothing he did made any sense, but at least he glowered entertainingly.

So obviously, I didn't care for the movie. "But what about the stunts?" comes the querulous voice from the back of the room. "Were there lots of stunts?" Well, yeah. Sort of. They were mostly CGI, though. And they were using KrazyZoom camerawork so I couldn't always tell what was going on. But when two motorcycles are zooming through a desert next to a train and there's a (completely unexplained) ramp right there, you can be pretty sure that they're going to be riding on top of the train. And if that's your thing, go for it.

Actually, I'm not even sure why I saw Torque, since I didn't bother watching any of the recent crazy driving flicks. I sometimes do that, where I skip the first (good) wave of movies and only check in really late. Like, I didn't see any of the Scream movies or even Scary Movie. But then I watched Scary Movie 2. This time, I didn't see any movies with the words "Fast" or "Furious" in them, and I didn't even watch that "Fast Lane" show on television. So I already knew I was seeing the dregs of the genre. Really, I just didn't want to watch that Stiller-Aniston flick.