Hello and welcome to the debut edition of Mojito Movies, the San Francisco-based organization dedicated to the inebriated viewing of middling to horrible movies.  While other (re: lesser) blogs may have come first, our late-breaking arrival marks us as the soused movie-going blog for your generation, complete with backward-turned ball caps and the ability to explode walls of styrofoam bricks with a single guitar solo.  Besides, it’s not like those other two sites ever post anything, so what else are you going to read?

I’m new to San Francisco.  So new, in fact, that I’m not actually living in the city proper, but in company housing in the tiny town of Millbrae, which is nestled between SF proper and the equally tiny town of Burlingame where my job is.  It’s textbook suburban, reminding me a lot of the cities in Alabama where I grew up, only with a hotel every hundred feet instead of a church.  Just one of the many side effects of bordering the San Francisco Bay rather than the Tennessee River, I guess.

Our Barbarian pre-gaming took us to San Mateo, or more accurately, an odd little bubble of shops, eateries, bars and parking garages that as far as I’m concerned is all there is to the place.  Cornett was good enough to come pick me up from my hotel, as my non-driver status is pretty much the only souvenir I brought with me from NYC.  After some fantastic Indian food at a place I can’t remember the name of, we went to a nearby bar for the booze required to watch mostly naked people slaughter each other.  The bar was… okay, with a staff that was perfectly nice (when they could be bothered to be behind the bar) and very understanding of our ordering drinks two at a time.  Cornett and I have know each other for ages online, but this was our first time meeting in person, so I’d like to take this opportunity to thank him for being a fun and smart drinking companion and not turning me in to a skin-suit.  Of course, since you’re just reading this rather than being there in person, you’re just going to have to assume that it’s really me (Lamb) writing this, aren’t you?

After several drinks, we stumbled to the thankfully nearby theater to watch Conan.  Or as it’s known in Russia, KOHAH BAPBAP 3D.

In Soviet Russia, Kohah Bapbap YOU.

I hate to blow your minds like this, but it turns out the 3D in KOHAH BAPBAP is totally unnecessary.  It’s the same post-processing crap as 99% of all other 3D movies lately, only this time it appears to have been done by the AV Club of the local shortbus school.  There’s several times where it looks outright horrible, and the few times you knew it was coming before you even walked in the theater - a severed head there, a wench’s boob there - were not even remotely worth it.  If you can see it in the usual ol’ two dimensions, DO SO.

So if the 3D is crappy, then what exactly does the move have going for it?  Well:

1. It’s narrated by Morgan Freeman
2. Within minutes of the movie starting the screen is filled by a GIANT 3D fetus
3. It earns its R rating at every possible opportunity - the closest to a review I read before watching was that the movie is 112 minutes long, and features 113 deaths.  That’s 1.009 deaths a minute, folks.
4. IT’S NARRATED BY MORGAN GODDAMN FREEMAN

I seriously wonder if Morgan Freeman knows he was involved.  Like, maybe he talks in his sleep and somebody recorded the results.  To back me up on this, Freeman only talks us through the first bit of the movie, but that’s more than enough to make the nearly two hours of dude slaughter that follows feel like deleted scenes from Shawshank Redemption.

I must admit I didn’t think much of Conan the first time I saw him - looked like a stiff breeze would knock him over.  That was my first impression of the Cimmerian.

It also stars Jason Momoa, him what played Kahl Drogo on Game of Thrones.  I’m sure there are die-hards out there appalled by anyone other than Arnie playing the part, but Momoa does a fantastic job with the bit and is far more menacing than this guy:

So, where were we?  Oh right:  giant 3D fetus.

KOHAH BAPBAP was born on the battlefield, literally - in between Morgan Freeman’s narration, we’re thrown in to a tumultuous battle where Conan’s super pregnant mom is mortally wounded.  In her last moments, she demands that her husband, Ron Perlman, CUT THE BABY OUT OF HER so that she can see her son before she dies.  This sets the tone for everything involving the Cimmerian hordes - their every working moment is utterly BRUTAL.  Seriously, these people can’t get out of bed without killing something and setting it on fire.  It also establishes that the women of Hyboria - pretty sure I had that He-Man playset, by the way - are every bit as hardcore as the men.  Just to keep things balanced, the men in turn show just as much skin.

We jump forward a bit to find teen Conan proving himself the best pubescent man-killer in the village, but not better than Ron Perlman, who repeatedly kicks his ass via training montage.  At one point they’re fighting on a frozen lake, and Perlman the Barbarian stabs the ice and flips the bit of it Conan is standing on, sending him plunging in to the icy water below.  Cornett immediately dubbed this “Chekov’s ice trick”, which is pretty dead on.  Look, if you’re on the prowl for multi-layered plots with intricate, mind-blowing twists, you need to keep on looking.  KOHAH BAPBAP is many things - bloody, violent, and surprisingly true to the character of the books and comics - but above all, it is as predictable as the sun rising in the East or Republican politicians having a garage full of rentboys.

The tranquil, blood-splattered world of Conan’s childhood is shattered when Evil Guys ride in to town seeking the final bit of an evil mask that looks like a hentai cosplayer’s dream come true.  The leader of the Evil Guys is a dude named ZYM, who along with his spooky boots goth girl daughter is looking to rule the land with arcane powers and resurrect his dead witch wife.  They kill Ron Perlman in front of lil’ Conan in an insanely awesome way, only to then announce that having the mask is only part of their plan - they now need someone they refer to as the Pure Blood!  Will this “Pure Blood” be an adorable labrador, or a potential interest for our hero?  Place your bets now, readers!

Draw me like your French girls, Conan.

We jump to the future where Conan has grown in to Kahl Drogo and is straight jacking dudes with his friend, who I keep comparing to Bunk from The Wire.  The character is basically the same - they get drunk together, chase girls together, and he’s the only one to visit Conan when he gets busted down to Harbor Patrol.  

Look at you, givin’ a fuck when it ain’t your turn to give a fuck.

The only reference to Conan’s slave years (as seen in the original movie and other stuff) is that he totally hates slavers, going out of his way to brutally murder them and bang their former lady slaves.  Everything’s coming up Conan in the slaver killing business, when suddenly he gets the chance to murderize one of the people responsible for killing his dad.  While other men would just kill the guy, Conan goes out of his way to get arrested, get sent to jail, kill a bunch of guards, and then sets it up so the other prisoners gut the fat, noseless jerk he was after in the first place.  This is something else the movie gets right, that Conan is not only a blood-crazed murder machine carved from a nightmarish wall of muscle, but he’s also clever and cruel.  He’s Cimmerian Batman, basically.

Evil Guy and now full-grown daughter played by Rose McGowan (who looks like a Newcomer from Alien Nation that dated a LARPer in college) attack a village in search of the Pure Blood, who just happens to live there.  While the assorted monks bravely try to gum up the soldiers weapons with their bodies, Pure Blood girl (played by Rachel Nichols) gets away in a cart pursued by one of the main Evil Guys.  Conan rides them down and kills them in a variety of interesting ways, leaving only one of the main Evil Guys alive to be killed in hilarious fashion later.

Dear LJ: Dad only bought me enough finger dongles for one hand. FML.

Conan gets his first shot at killing the guy that killed his dad, and goes about it in a surprisingly Captain Sensible manner - he arms the lady monk he’s using as bait, and even rigs some barrels of oil to explode if need be.  Bad Guy and Rose McGowan show up, and Conan and lady monk fight some special effects before Conan gets his ass kicked and they have to retreat off a cliff to Bunk the Barbarian’s pirate ship.  Things go better for everybody when the ship is attacked and Conan and Rachel Nichols kill dudes in increasingly brutal ways.  This is known in the Conan-verse as “foreplay”.

Rachel Nichols: not just the founder of Fun Hat Club, but a member.

Conan goes off to kill the bad guy Stephen Lang, but not before Bunk, who was told to get her somewhere safe, tells monk lady to go hit that.  Which she does!  There’s some shadowy nudity in THREE DIMENSIONS, including what are supposed to be Rachel Nichols’ breasts but Cornett feels sure belong to a body double.  There’s a lot of Kahl Drogo’s ass, which appears to be composed of two toasters, because KOHAH BAPBAP 3D is an equal opportunity jam, you dig?

Monk lady gets captured on the way back to the boat, because it’s the part of the movie where that’s supposed to happen.  Conan enlists the help of a thief king he saved earlier to break in to the final boss’ lair, where he fights a big tentacled thing and kills some other guys, but not the one he was supposed to.  Oh no, that fight is reserved for the actual end level, KOHAH BAPBAP’s World 8-4, which is inside a ridiculous skull cave.  Because fuck you, that’s why.

Like this, but up a mountain and, like, 86% more bad ass.

ZYM does the evil ceremony he needs monk lady for, which involves feeding a mask her blood to make it alive and then putting it on his face.  This is supposed to make him a god, but all it really does is cover up his receding hairline with a thrift store version of Starro the Conqueror.  He and Conan fight for a while in different parts of the cave thing they’re in, and then monk lady and Jadzia Dax witchy Rose McGowan fight, because they are the girls and that’s how that works.  McGowan dies violently, and then there’s a whole bit where ZYM remembers he’s wearing a world-ending artifact of ultimate evil and tries to summon his daughter’s spirit (or wife’s, or whatever) to possess monk lady, but Conan pulls the bridge version of Chekov’s Ice Trick on him before it sticks.  So, less of an evil god made flesh and more of just a dude with two swords, I guess.  Then everybody goes home, including a bit where he drops off Rachel Nichols at her village, where we last saw everybody getting killed.  Because when you try to tie Conan the goddamn Barbarian down, you get a quickie in a cave and then taken back to the smoking remains of the only home you’ve ever known  Serves you right, wench.

Just remember the happy times, like when he killed a dozen dudes in front of you and tied you to a rock because you talked too much.

Forget the SCALE and CLASS systems of our Margarita and Martini brethren, and open your heart to the TASTE Table!

T - Tomfoolery:  The only bits we laughed at were when something so crazy happened there was no other option, and that’s how it should be.  Thank god they played this as straight as possible rather than having Conan quip his way across Hyboria. 1.

A - Action:  The action was by and large as awesome and graphic as it needed to be, though it definitely went downhill a little after about the halfway point.  For whatever reason Conan was less and less of a barbarian the further he got from the village he grew up on, to the point that end of the movie wasn’t nearly as exciting as the rest. 8.

S - Story:  Totally by the numbers plot-wise, and the Big Bad was really more of a Sizable Inconvenience, but they totally got the character of Conan.  Not that “large man who brutalizes people he doesn’t like” is a hard target to hit, mind. 5.

T - Titillation: KOHAH BAPBAP 3D really has something for everyone in the flesh department, though I think we all could have done with a bit more of Rachel Nichols showing a bit more of Rachel Nichols.  Or at least what there was in better lighting. 7.

E - Everything Else:  What else is there?  I could have done with another hour or so of Conan’s childhood growing up in a metal album cover.  Also the world is very visually interesting, with nothing looking like Vancouver or a soundstage.  Even though it was probably all Vancouver or a soundstage. 6.

- Lamb