Gymkata

reviewed by Matt Magri (magri@anarcho.com)

[here's the Gymkata entry in the excellent Internet Movie Database]

I'd like to say at the outset that it was the unacceptable reviews of Gymkata that I kept coming across on the web that inspired me to start the Unintentionally Entertaining Movies Archive in the first place. What a bunch of sourpusses! Kurt Thomas can't act! Oh, well, excuuuuse me! The man was a world champion gymnast, not some refugee from a theatre company! I thought he did a fine job... better than a lot of folks who have chosen acting for their careers and almost certainly better than his web critics would do in his place! So lay off him already! Sir John Gielgud couldn't have fixed this movie (and would have looked pretty lame on the pommel horse, to boot).

On with the review... "Yahk-mallah!"

First off, Gymkata is not a movie I love to hate, it's a movie I love to be amused by. Like an intricate puzzle box, it has layer upon layer of [unintentional] mystery, which the viewer is left to solve.

Some examples:

1. Every foreigner who enters the country of Parmistan has to play The Game. No one has ever survived The Game. So, how do we explain the Kahn's daughter, Princess Rubali, whose mother couldn't have been from Parmistan (no way!)? Here's one explanation.
2. Come to think of it, Zamir didn't look much like a native, either. What's the deal there?
3. Given what's involved in entering Parmistan (negotiating treacherous terrain, whitewater rafting, and so on), isn't it pretty surprising that anyone has ever tried the game? Is that really how you get in and out of there? Of course, that may explain why most of the natives look like the result of too few chromosomes being spread way too thin (which brings us back to question 1 again...).
4. Jonathan tells Thorg ("The Superman") that he was impressed with Thorg's performance at Munich (in an apparent reference to the Olympics held there). What was Thorg at the Munich Olympics... a terrorist? While I would never expect Jonathan to be impressed by a terrorist, it's hard to look at Thorg ("The Superman") and see a gymnast or a boxer or a karate expert or even a weightlifter (and there was no curling at the Summer Olympics, remember). He looks more like, I dunno, a bouncer. Perhaps Jonathan saw Thorg ("The Superman") tossing some drunken revelers out of a Munich bar at some point? Still, he seemed like he'd have to be a pretty darn famous bouncer... like Mr. T (only flabbier). Waitaminute: Mr. T... Thorg... a coincidence, or an attempt to cash in on the Mr. T-mania? You decide...

Well, I don't want to give away the story, so we'll stop there. Oh, that reminds me... the story. I had almost forgotten it, too! ;-)

It's desperately important that the U.S. set up an SDI emplacement in Parmistan. Well, it turns out that if you win The Game you get to make one request which the Parmistani must satisfy (BTW, that's probably why no one has ever been allowed to win the thing... that's a bit open-ended for a prize, after all). Anyway, the U.S. had sent Jonathan's father into Parmistan to compete in The Game. He was supposed to request an SDI station if he won. How they would staff it I can't imagine since everyone from the outside would have to compete in The Game and the folks on the inside... well, let's just say that operating an SDI installation might be just a bit beyond them. Another mystery! At any rate, we see Jonathan's dad failing spectacularly at the beginning of the movie. So, Jonathan was supposed to go in, compete in The Game, and request the SDI station. On the plus side, Princess Rubali had somehow gotten out of the country and was there to instruct him in the nuances of The Game. Plus, Jonathan was trained to be an expert in a unique blend of gymnastics and karate called... Gymkata! On the minus side, the other powers were going to try to compete in The Game and block the U.S. Also, Zamir, who was a chief of staff or something, had evil plans to modernize the country (probably involving building roads into it, etc.) and marry Princess Rubali (which only seems sensible considering his choices).

This was apparently based on a novel by Dan Tyler Moore called The Terrible Game. I've never read it so I don't really know how much of the blame it has to share in this.