America 2028 Movie Reviews, #14

America 2028 Movie Reviews

My esteemed readers, I’m assuming that when you first saw the title Book Burnin’ Bikini Babes on Bourbon, your reaction matched my own. Upon reading the movie’s name, you most likely thought to yourself, “Gawd…that title offers no hints as to what the story could be about…how esoteric and meaningless.”

I get your frustrations. Even though I am a highly-trained movie critic, I get it. Sometimes, those Hollywood elites and their high-falutin’ Harvard minds can’t resist showing the rest of us how smart they are, how they know all these facts about fine art and fancy restaurants. Giving their movies weird-sounding titles that don’t make any sense—just to demonstrate how many more IQ points they got.

That’s why I’m here. We’re on the same side. Since the writers of the story failed to give it a descriptive name, I’ll have to fill in the gap with this review.

You know what? Here’s an idea. I’ll pitch this to you, communicate the quick story and act as a type of translator that helps you understand those Hollywood types and their oh-so-gigantic intellects.

So, here goes:

Book Burnin’ Bikini Babes on Bourbon is…think…think…T&A meets the SS. 

44DD meets the KKK. 

Wild-eyed nazi-chicks whacked on Wild Turkey. 

An incel’s wet dream, on Jim Beam.  

Clocking in at just under two hours, this big-budget extravaganza might very well be the perfect propaganda vehicle for these quizzical times. 

Personally, after reviewing a string of movies that all contained narrative elements like plot and character development, what a refreshing change of pace to evaluate a movie where none of that existed. Even highly-trained movie critics like me enjoy those occasions where we get to dial back our deconstructivity and let the magic of cinema take us away from ever-present thoughts about bread lines, serfdom and radiation storms. 

With BBBBB, viewers can give their thinking caps the night off. 

On the surface, BBBBB feels like your innocently-titillating car-wash flick. You know, the type of movie where, say, the local sorority needs to raise lots of money in just a few days or else they will lose their house because their hippy housemom gambled away the chapter’s money throwing dice down on Skid Row—yeah, it feels like that type of tale on the surface.

Only, to get the 360-degree view of BBBBB, a viewer needs to add in giant helpings of fascism. Also, liberally apply corn-based, distilled spirits to every member of the cast—I’m talking feed them metric tons of bourbon, get them to the half-a-drink-away-from-face-down-drunk stage. Once that is taken care of, gather the gaggle of jiggly babes for a torch-lit march and chorale them around a beach bonfire by a pile of books. In no time, the dictatorship-esque shenanigans will come to life. 

Seriously, this is that movie. No other movie is this movie and this movie is that movie. 

BBBBB starts off lighthearted and lightly-clad, both not too deep and not too clothed. And…it ends in that very same place. Even with the bourbonically-inspired, babe-on-babe violence that dominated the second half of the film—the bruises, scratchings, cuts, maimings. I have to say: as I watched the closing credits scroll up the screen, it felt like the Earth stood still during those two hours. 

I guess the writers wanted to express that, like the reality around us, zero progress is the norm in fictional stories now as well. 

And as it is with pretty much every other movie in the year 2028, the inherent, supremacist messaging in BBBBB comes across as far too obvious to be insidious or subversive. No subtlety here; that nazified rhetoric is front and center. 

If you ask me, the in-your-face, surface-level fascism feels nicer. There’s no chance of me wandering the streets afterward, wondering if I missed any of the subliminal National Socialism messages.

On those days when the radiation storms don’t ruin visibility and I am able to take a look around at the landscape of our country, it’s crazy to see how seamlessly BBBBB’s brand of propaganda fits the year 2028.

Once again: no subtlety here. Reading is bad. Chick-violence is good. 

Even the “babes” themselves, they were all blonde and siliconically-enhanced. I wasn’t expecting to see a bathing-suit-clad cross-section of the UN, but still. Like, not even one brunette or redhead at this book-torching. 

Talk about Aryan! 

While I do get the director’s choice to stick to one ethnicity of hottie, once the bourbon kicked in and the violence broke out, the narrative started to get convoluted. As they tried to kill each other in fits of rage that few of them would remember the next day, I had a hard time telling which ballistic blonde was which. The sudden upshift in collective energy levels—the characters’ various bodily limbs flailing and punching and kicking and scratching—I lost track of who was who.

I’m not really complaining; a director’s aesthetic choice is a director’s aesthetic choice. All I am doing is sharing my highly-trained movie critic POV with you, the viewer. 

On the bright side, once the fighting began, the book-burning subsided. 

 

More 2028 movie reviews.

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