How Freejack Would’ve Looked Starring Charlie Sheen Instead of Emilo Estevez

It's the year 2009. Emilio Estevez is America's most desirable man. Discuss.

Freejack (1992), a widely panned cyberpunk film that has aged about as well as any of the Rolling Stones, is a classic demonstration of the perils of setting your futuristic thriller too near into the very near future. In 1991, Alex Furlong (Emilio Estevez) is a cocky, 20-something race-car driver  whose petite body is transported – a split second before his would-be death in a spectacularly slow-mo fiery wreck – to 2009, where billionaire Ian McCandless (Anthony Hopkins, appearing for maybe, 5 minutes total, and exclusively as a hologram, so not really in it at all) wants to use Furlong’s body to house his recently departed spirit. I realize this sounds like a bunch of jibberish written by a 13-year-old boy who has been surreptitiously taking swigs from the “grown-up” drinks at a family get-together, but that is sincerely the most clear way to phrase it.

This act – the springing of just-about-to-die humans forward in time for the sole purpose of using them as fleshy vessels for the blackened souls of the filthy rich (much like the anchors on Fox News) – is known as bonejacking (that’s what she said). The human “room to rent” is known as a freejack…Or maybe they’re only called a freejack when they break loose from their captors? Who knows.

Time is NOT on your side, my friend.

Anyhow; Furlong, the freejack, awakens in 2009 in the bowels of a tankish time machine(?) that is under the control of a hammy Mick Jagger, who wisely lets his upper lip handle most of the heavy emoting. Furlong beats a hasty retreat and the cat and mouse chase is on. Confusing nomenclature aside, Freejack never satisfactorily explains any of its “cool” futuristic plot devices; the time travel, virtual reality, spiritual databases – all of these are breezily mentioned as if we are to accept that they transpired in the course of 18 years. This is why you should never set your crappy futuristic adventure in a Dystopia that’s less than 2 decades into the future. This hiccup in judgment is directly connected to a pivotal plot point involving Ian’s feelings for Furlong’s former lover Julie (Rene Russo, a minx of a cougar, who, according to my calculations would be 26 years Furlong’s senior by the time he jumps 18 years into the future and sets out to find her), but this doesn’t make it any easier to buy a 2009 that has no Internet, despite the fact you can store your soul on a laptop the size of a Target.

Do you hear that Clarice? That's the sound of a beloved thespian cashing a check.

Oh, and also; the ozone layer in Freejack‘s 2009 is completely shot to hell, which, in addition to rampant drug use and crippling poverty has driven much of the population into the bitter depths of stupidity, insanity and hostile self-interest. So that part was at least pretty spot on.

Since, unlike the creators of Freejack I live not in a vacuum, I’m aware of the many recent foibles of Emilio Estevez’s considerably more famous and feckless brother Charlie Sheen, who, as Rental Rehab reviewer Kelli has previously noted is seemingly impervious to consequence no matter what brand of abusive crazy he brings to the party. (Why this latitude of mercy isn’t bestowed upon the equally vexing Lindsay Lohan is a mystery for the Perez Hiltons of the universe). While watching Freejack, I couldn’t help but wonder what this particular Dystopia would’ve looked like had it starred Charlie Sheen in the role of our speed loving, law shirking, vixen banging hero Furlong. Projections below.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" "Mind/body transferrence!" "I was gonna say heroin, but, sure! OK. Why not? Whatever."

The 9 Ways Freejack Would Have Differed if it had Starred Charlie Sheen Instead of Emilio Estevez:

9.  Furlong’s recurring line – Nibble my ear for luck – to lover Julie? Yeah; it wouldn’t have been his ear.

8.  “We regret to announce that because Charlie Sheen ‘accidentally’ (wink) shot co-star Rene Russo in the arm, tonight, the role of Julie will be played by that chick who made out with Neve Campbell in the pool in that one movie that we remember nothing else about.”

"Mumble, mumble, mumble, thick English accent, mumble mumble."

7. Charlie would’ve demanded that Mick Jagger’s role as bonejacking mercenary Victor Vacendak be given instead to Keith Richards. Everyone knows that Richards has the better drugs.

6. Growing frustrated with his own inability to get through an early pre-death-race scene in which he is supposed to sell potential sponsors on Furlong’s affable clean-cut charm, the estimable Buster Poindexter/David Johansen (playing Furlong’s friend and agent, Brad) goes off script, trading the line “He’s drug free” for an abbreviated version of “Hot Hot Hot.”

5. The scene in which Furlong has trouble finding his way around the crime-, hooker- and drug-infested wasteland of the red district rings inauthentic and is instead traded for a scene wherein a young Martin Sheen encounters and confronts a wild-eyed, bowling-shirt-clad Charlie Sheen who is found sitting in a darkened room whispering into a recording device about the time he had to pay full price for an escort service and an eightball; The horror, the horror.

We're to believe that the man whose body is lusted after by Rene Russo is paying to hit this?

4. In Freejack‘s original narrative, Furlong’s body is ludicrously more desirable than gold because it has gone unexposed to the drugs and pollutants inflicted upon the average American citizen by the year 2009. The necessary suspension of disbelief proves too much for even the future director of Under Siege 2: Dark Territory and the entire production is scrapped.

3. Owing to certain unavoidable legal implications, the scene where Furlong is given a gun by a nun is omitted. Instead, Furlong is given a bow and a rubber chicken, in loving tribute to Sheen’s star-making role in the dark French drama Hot Shots: Part Deux.

2.  Instead of techy cyber tunes, a harmonized “Mennnnnnnnn” is used as the musical segue between one boring action sequence and the next.

1. Even shittier one liners.

The eyes follow you everywhere. Like a painting of Christ.

Rental Rehab review by Tricia

Get Ho-Ho-Hosed By Jingle All the Way

It is obviously that I am exasperated. Look at my hands. It is not a tumor.The goggles do nothing!

Jingle All the Way (1996) may very well have wished to have been a charming family-friendly Christmas movie with a light-hearted battle of good and evil and a race against time at its delicious candy coated center. Instead, it’s littered with detestable characters–particularly the protagonist–who repel the audience with their callow, self-serving and childish behavior, a fact that is not magically wiped away by a cheap 11^th hour personality shift presumably meant to inject a timeless message of the redemptive powers of family and the True Meaning of the holidays.

I don’t say this often, but Bill Maher is absolutely right and perhaps even understating things with his Christmas 2010 video message admonishing Americans for our wanton greed and worship of cheap, consumerist shit. In fact, he hit the nail square on its Made In China plastic head. So in that way, one could argue that Jingle All the Way is actually an important cultural artifact; a mid-’90s bellwether of just how much worse things could get. A warning of the snowballing consumerism that explodes during the holidays with Americans’ increasing willingness to lose their humanity in the battle for acquiring more objects. And not  objects that are necessary for human survival—food, shelter, beer—but rather, literal plastic pieces of disposable and meaningless crap that they are more than willing to beat the shit out of another human being in order to buy.

It's OK, Phil. We forgive you.

Actually…There is obviously nothing to learn from Jingle All the Way except A) poor Phil Hartman’s talents were useless in the face of such cinematic evil and B) director Brian Levant (Beethoven, Are We There Yet?, Snow Dogs) hates children. As such, we’ll do what we do with every silly little movie that comes across our plates; drink an unreasonable amount of cheap red wine, make some snarky comments and top it off with a holiday appropriate drinking game!

The plot in sum: Howard (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a career obsessed steroid abuser who can’t keep his promises to his personality-free wife Liz (Mrs. Tom Hanks) or young Skywalker son Jamie (a delightful melon headed Jake Lloyd, who is NOT at all bitter about his childhood spent acting in shitty roles in shitty movies.).

Always putting the client before his family, Howard neglects the true No. 1 customer and misses his child’s karate match in a scene that is heart breakingly familiar to any of us who had parents that were so obsessed with making sure that we had a comfortable roof over our head, food on the table and the chance to one day attend college that they occasionally missed a minor footnote in our whiny pre-adolescent lives. And what is this high-powered career to which Howard is a slave, you ask? Hollywood agent? Publisher of a New York magazine? Secret agent for the government? Nay. Howard is a mattress salesmen.

Let's see if I can get Jake Lloyd to make a spiteful comment about how "mature" I am for always bringing up the Anakin thing.

Howard tries to make up for this parenting slight and various other shortcomings (such as, being a complete and utter tool) by scoring THE toy of the season for Jamie; a Turbo Man action figure. Because Howard is so obsessed with his exciting work in the bedding industry that he can’t focus on the needs of anyone else, he forgets until the last minute that he must get this object in order to prove his love to his son and to a lesser extent, his wife. That the toy was likely manufactured in China by children his son’s own age is only the least of the issues with this film, so let’s just keep forging ahead, shall we?

The story then freestyles into a jilted re-telling of Howard’s search for the holy grail. The editing choices and sequencing are so abrupt and jarring as to almost seem avant garde until you remember “Ha, ha, ha….no. It’s just SHITTY.” Howard is pitted against Myron (played by venerable 90s comedian Sinbad, who YELLS EVERY LINE cause it’s funnier that way), another dead-beat dad who waited ’til the last minute to get his son’s Christmas gift. This little plot device seems unlikely, given how he blames his dad’s failure to get him a specific toy for his 8^th Christmas (or something) as the reason for his shortcomings as a human being. That Myron is an unstable United States Postal employee is like a delicious layer of frosting on the shortbread cookie of crap. These two engage in a rock ’em, sock ’em battle to the end, searching high and low for that impossible-to-find Turbo Man, and wouldn’t you know it? What they really find is some important life lessons along the way. (Not at all.)

So there’s that. Now – mix up a Christmas cocktail, pour some eggnog and crack open a bottle of Five O’Clock gin, cause nothing’s ruining your Christmas faster than the Jingle All the Way holiday drinking game!

Ready? Good.

– Take a swig of whiskey every time Ahnold sounds like he’s aping McBain.

– Take another pull whenever “Jingle All the Way”, the tune, is subtlety woven into the picture. Thematic elements, people!

– Eat 3 pieces of spiked watermelon and toss another piece of Star Wars memorabilia atop the Yule log every time “Jamie” reads his lines in a way that makes the inside of your ears clench up.

– Drink half a bottle of cheap whiskey and consider turning the second half into a Molotov cocktail everytime there is a joke about someone “going postal.”

EVERYBODY STAND BACK! I AM SINBAD, Y'ALL! ZANY! ZANY! POW!

– Zlam one Zima for every zany ’90z joke.

– Wrinkle your nose in disgust and alarm and wash it away with a red or green Jell-O shot whenever a comedic actor that you otherwise enjoy appears doing something embarrassing. Such as appearing in this %^#@-ing abomination.

– Slowly sip on a glass of mulled wine whenever Howard does something reprehensible like shove an old lady, assault a child, assault an animal, assault a little person or commit larceny and various acts of vandalism. Emphasis on slowly. We want you around to celebrate New Year’s!

– Drink an entire case of delicious Four Loko whenever a character has a meaningful interaction with another human being or does something remotely humorous, sincere or kind. What? You’re scared this would kill you? Trust us; this won’t ever be a factor in the game.

– Shotgun an entire…wait a minute. Was that a $%&@-ing Rodney King joke?

– Finish your whiskey and write a check payable to your local foodbank or shelter for abused women and children when Sinbad completes his speech about how a child failing to get 1 toy at 1 Christmas will necessitate a lifetime of therapy and regret.

– 1 Irish car bomb for every mail bomb joke. Yes, you will need more than 1.

– One disappearing glass of Continuity Error wine every time the scene cuts from a close-up of the city to an overhead shot of the city. Snow! No snow! Snow! No snow! Winter in Minnesota! Summer in Minnesota! Magic!

– One bitter cup of Irish coffee every time Howard nearly lets his child die a horrific death in his quest to get said child a toy.

– Finish all alcohol and reconfirm to yourself by checking Wikipedia for the 4^th time tonight that, yes, THIS man has indeed served as governor of one of the most powerful states in the union. Merry Christmas!

Sorry. This is a still from that OTHER hateful Christmas movie.

–Rental Rehab review by Tricia

I have had it with these m*****f****** snakes on this m*****f****** boat: A review of Anaconda

Sigh. Remember when all we needed was the promise of Ice Cube's booty to get us into the theater? What do you mean it wasn't HIS ass that got this thing made? Then how the hell did this happen?!

Anaconda – 1.5/4 stars

Whether the fascination is borne of innate fears of the species that ultimately caused The Fall of Man or we’re all simply suckers for an obvious metaphor for the phallus, snakes and cinema enjoy a long history together. The obvious crowning achievement (providing your definition of “achievement” is “gimmick that wore out its welcome long before entering the movieplex”) of this love/hate affair is obviously 2006’s better-in-theory Snakes on a Plane.

But for all the hype afforded to Snakes on a Plane, that film is far outmatched by the success of Anaconda (1997), which nearly doubled the box office take-home of the snake-infested Internet-craze-fueled Samuel L. Jackson vehicle, thanks in no small part to a certain Ms. Jennifer Lopez who spends 99% of the movie clad in a form-fitting, light-colored tank top that is in perpetual danger of being splashed with water.

Try rubbing its belly!