How can I properly explain what it's like to watch Mad Max Fury Road? Alright, you ready for this? Stick with me, now. Picture you've got Attention Deficit Disorder. You've forgotten to take your pills for the day. Someone offers you a large coffee, you drink it in four seconds. After that you have a Red Bull chugging contest. You eat fourteen hundred pixie sticks. You snort a little bit of cocaine. Then you snort a lot of cocaine. Until finally you shove an adrenaline needle through your own eyeball. That's a bit what watching Mad Max is like.
The movie is batshit crazy insane. Like I've never seen anything like it. I mean, I've accidentally watched CartoonSwim at 3 in the morning, but this is something else. This is so crazy I can't really compare it to anything. In fact, Mad Max is now the new staple for insane that I will use when I need to compare something crazy I saw. If I saw a half-naked Santa Clause playing tug-o-war with a fully grown adult moose while his midget elf friend was fighting a tree and singing the 'We are Farmers' jingle at the top of his lungs in front of an elementary school in Florida-- I'd say it was like Mad Max-lite. And that's totally a good thing.
You know how when you watch Fear and Loathing or any Terry Gilliam or David Lynch movie and you sit and watch and wonder what the hell is going on-- that's kind of what Mad Max does, except you know exactly what is going on you just can't believe it. Even though it's technically a sequel/prequel/remake/spinoff/reboot-- whatever-- this movie is one of a kind. I can safely say that you have never seen a movie like this one. Trying to explain the plot would be like trying to explain electrodynamics to a four year old in a language you made up yourself. You kinda just skip to the big ideas and put them in four year old terms.
Uh... well, Tom Hardy is Max. It's the post-apocalypse. And the entire movie is essentially one long chase. There's not much dialogue. There's hardly any down time between chase sequences (which last a long time for each one and get more and more preposterously amazing as they go on). Charlize Theron plays a one-armed BADASS named Imperator Furiosa ("It's Furiooooosa, not Furiosaaaah"). She is pretty much a one woman wrecking ball of female-testosterone and kick-assery. Other than that, you just need to see it to believe it. I'm serious.
Here's what separates Mad Max from other popcorn summer blockbusters and explosive post-apocalyptic films-- it's actually got a story hidden beneath all the frenetic action and carnage. It's got humanity laced all through it, when really no one on screen even remotely resembles a human. It's shockingly got incredible UNSUBTLE feminist undertones. I might actually call this movie an action movie for feminists. It's incredible.
Even further, you will have no clue what the hell is going to happen next. After you think you've seen the craziest "ballsack stapled to the wall by psychotic ex-girlfriend with rabies" shit in the movie, somehow director George Miller (who directed the original three films back in the 70s and 80s) seems to come up with something even more absurd and surprising. It's a great movie to kick off the summer and I hope it reflects the quality of summer films we're going to see this year. I know this is wishful thinking, however. Definitely make time to go see this movie.
One caveat, though. If you are squeamish, or faint of heart, or any sort of baby back bitch about witnessing anything visually disturbing (and I'm not talking about gore, because there is some, but not much)... you may want to be cautious. There are some nauseating scenes/creatures/humans/situations that are not for the faint of heart. I've got a pretty strong stomach when it comes to disturbing sights in films, and even I had to set down the popcorn.
Don't see Mad Max on an empty stomach. In point of fact, don't see Mad Max on a full stomach either. See Mad Max on a regular stomach... whatever the hell regular stomach means. Just see the movie and witness crazy/beautiful for the very first perfect time.
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