Graham Linehan set up a bad movie club on Twitter last week, managing to get 40,000 people to come together online and sit through “The Happening”. An admirable endeavour indeed. This morning I had a solitary bad movie club moment of my own when I sat down to watch the wonderfully appalling 아유레디? (R U Ready?).
It starts as a joyful overlong advert for Everland (A surprisingly good theme park just outside of Seoul), introducing us to some fascinatingly annoying characters. The little orphan boy who claims he still has a daddy, the two over-styled badly dressed bullies, the nerdy schoolboy, the stressed out doctor, the drunk grandpa, the heroic park ranger and the cool bus driver.
Even better, within the first fifteen minutes they go on the safari ride and we are treated to the most ridiculous looking fake bears to have ever graced the silver screen. Things get even better when the bears attack the safari bus and we’re treated to an absolutely insane three minutes of man-in-suit fun, concluding with a spectacular hit and run on one of the mischievous ursine fellows.
All of our two dimensional characters (save for the cool bus driver and the fatter of the two bullies) escape into an abandoned building, which conveniently blocks cell-phone signals and forces the motley crew of stereotypes to band together as a team to find their way to safety. All is not well though as the little orphan boy has lost his teddy bear, Baku, who eats and lives on nightmares. Oh the humanity! Fortunately a plaque kindly placed on the floor by the Korean version of Basil Exposition lets us know that this spooky building will help us find what we have lost, but it will be up to each individual to do it in their own way…
A plague of rats fall on our crew, the doors conveniently creak open and everybody runs off into the woods. The adventure starts here, as the grandfather starts to have flashbacks to Vietnam and the rats chase our heroes, all the while showing off the ridiculously poor CGI, until out of nowhere, for no particular reason, a fire starts and all the rats are burned to death. We then get a small serving of misogyny from the bully and the doctor towards the park ranger as they wander through the countryside.
They settle down for the night; Grandpa looks at old war photos and tells everyone the war isn’t over because he backed down at a crucial moment. Mysterious music tells us that something is about to happen and everybody else looks a bit puzzled. Flares start fizzing and bombs explode! We are at war folks! What follows is an incoherent mess of an action sequence: with too many cuts and a lot of shaky camera work it is hard to tell what is going on. Finally the camera stays still for more than two seconds and we see that past events are occurring before our very eyes. Our heroes watch as 1970’s Grandpa goes through hell and present day Grandpa helps change the course of history and sacrifices himself.
Leaving Grandpa for dead, the others get onto the nearest helicopter and whole-heartedly fail to notice that the cool bus driver is taking them to their next destination. They get dropped onto an island and the characters finally understand the meaning of the rather obvious plaque from the start of their adventure. Grandpa found what he had lost and they must do the same! Thanks to a surprise avalanche that chain of thought is quickly broken and the five get themselves into a nearby car and drive away from a collapsing cliff face that seems to follow them no matter how far they drive. The car stalls, it starts to rain and the camera zooms in for close ups on the park ranger’s lady bits. The rain turns into a typhoon, people hang off cliffs and the little boy gets dragged out of the car just moments before it tumbles into a ravine. What excitement!
Everyone is wet and angry and starting to think about what they have lost. The bully and the schoolboy fight and become friendlier, and the director clumsily shows us that the doctor, the park ranger and the little orphan boy deserve to end up as a family.
Schoolboy and bully end up almost drowning in a swamp and discover that what they have lost is friendship and as they sink under the muddy waters we know that they truly love each other. Three down, three to go…
Our proto-family unit arrive at a spooky looking house and we know that we’re on the home stretch. After a touch of mawkish fireside chat and a brief nap, we flashback to the doctor’s school days and his broken relationship with a pig-tailed rotter who stamps on his gift of a rose and breaks his heart. Turns out his mother works at the market and the poor boy stinks of fish! Meanwhile the park ranger has been visited by the ghosts of birthdays past and we are all supposed to be scared by small children wearing too much eye shadow. We discover that the doctor was into self-harm as a teen and the park ranger’s mother died when she was young giving birth to her younger brother.
These two stories intertwine with wobbly shots of long, dark staircases and tearful close-ups. The director tries to tug our heartstrings, but it is all a bit laughable. The terrible English subtitles don’t help the mood and as the park ranger has a final moment with her dying mother, the director reaches new levels of moribundity.
Out of nowhere a flying black puddle swallows up the businessman and the park ranger finally forgives her little brother for her mother’s death. Except, surprise, it turns out that the park ranger is actually hugging the doctor! Oh the twist of all twists!
The happy threesome go outside and find Baku (Eater of Souls) along with a working walkie-talkie. The poor little orphan throws Baku away into a stream for no good reason and they all decide to look in a nearby cave. Spooky music tells us that all is not well with the world and we get another glimpse of the fearsome flying black puddle who starts to strangle the park ranger. The doctor gets involved, but that only leads to him being thrown into a pool of water. The screaming orphan realizes how foolish he was to throw away Baku and goes to find him. Narrowly escaping a watery death, the doctor decides he will not run away anymore and he faces up to the poorly animated flying black puddle. The puddle transmogrifies into young businessman and tries to stab his older self. Luckily whiny orphan boy finds the floating Baku and the doctor manages to talk his younger self out of murder/suicide.
Suddenly the drowned boys appear in a little train, pick up the three musketeers and Baku and choo-choo their way out of the tunnel and back onto the safari bus…
Wait… You mean it was all a dream? It never happened? I’ve just wasted ninety-five minutes of my life watching a dream sequence? The bus is back to normal and they head safely back to their ordinary lives. However, things have changed: the bully is nice to the schoolboy, the doctor says goodbye to the orphan and the bus driver discovers that the grandpa has died in his sleep all the while clutching a photo of his war buddies. What a happy ending! Grandpa’s dead and the doctor, park ranger and whiny little orphan boy didn’t end up together after all!
But wait, cut to a night scene, same bus, same driver and a group of schoolgirls. Whoa, mama! What opportunities for a sequel! Shame there never was one…
R U Ready? would be perfect material for the bad movie club, the only problem being that few would be able to get their hands on a copy. If you do get the chance it’s worth a look if only for the ridiculous bears. A truly terrible film that could become a guilty pleasure.
Tags: bad movie club, dvd, Graham Linehan, Korea, movie, review
