Masters of the Universe, part 2

The bad guys, complete with one action figure-deserving character who we'll be formally introduced to in a bit, march up to the door and start to "ionize" it. I'm not sure what that means, but it gives the animation team some practice is drawing red lines and glowing boxes. Meanwhile, Gwildor reveals a secret passage that runs under Castle Greyskull - that's right, under it. They have a secret backdoor into the castle that they could've used at any time so far. Too bad Skelly needed to go through the whole deception for a key, huh? They dash into it, and Gwildor channels the whole Bilbo Baggins "I don't LIKE adventures!" The bad guys come in, all disappointed, and start tearing the place a new one. Then, just because the director liked how it looked, we cut away for another quick shot of the stormtroopers rounding up the same rebels from Scene Three. 11:19

While you might be boggling over why Gwildor would have some sort of back entrance to Castle Greyskull conveniently located in his home, it's a lot easier to swallow once you realize that this movie has such a tight budget for Eternia sets that we're just lucky they didn't film Castle Greyskull in a Burger King bathroom, with Skeletor sitting on his "throne" beside a sign urging employees to wash their hands before returning to work. Of COURSE the tunnel had to go into the Castle!

And so, there they are. The stealthiest commando team in the universe, comprising of a troll, a senior citizen playing Soldier, a secondary character from Flashdance, and a partial nudist with a large plastic sword. Naturally, they all but shoot off fireworks to announce their arrival. They spot the Sorceress, suspiciously standing still, declare that it's "too quiet", and charge in recklessly anyway. I'm sure that Jabba the Hutt isn't hiding behind the curtain, waiting for them to defrost Han or anything.

Random observation: He-Man's superfluous Superman cape sags in the middle in the back - it's just attacked to his shoulders, but the middle sags enough to expose his upper back. This has the effect of looking more like He-Man just got out of bed and wrapped himself up in his silk blanky.

So, back to our heroes rushing into the obvious trap. They get to the Sorceress, who urges them to leave, but Duncan (hey, it's easier than typing out Man-At-Arms all the time) gasps and says that they'll never leave without her. Ohhh… I just got it. Duncan realizes that the Sorceress is the only female in the movie in his age range… only opportunity for a little after-battle lovin'… and he's not going to let this go without a fight. Good luck, pardner. The good guys bully Gwildor into using the omnipotent Key to let her go, which means we suffer through some moments of the troll bashing the Key's keypad and spouting off more technobabble. Meanwhile, the Sorceress says that she can withstand Skelly's power drain "until moonrise, until the Great Eye opens on the universe." We have no idea what the Great Eye is, but it might be a second cousin to the Great Liver. This is apparently important, and will play in later to Skelly's whole scheme to get Da Powah™.

Making the "He-Eyes" at his one and only

The bad guys return from their OSHA-mandated lunch break, much to the consternation of the good guys. Evil-Lyn strolls in, along with 30 of her best troops. Vastly outnumbered, with only a fraction of a moment to launch a surprise attack, the good guys remain perfectly still and let the enemy set up their attack formations and surround them completely. Skelly smirks, "Everything comes to he who waits." He's so, like, philosophical. He-Man makes strange and somewhat suggestive eyes at Skelly (no, really) and pouts, "Let her go." He's Moses 2.0! Skelly doesn't comply, and goes off on a whole expositional tangent: Sorceress gives him energy, moon rises, Great Eye opens, Skelly gets Power™. Yeah, we get it. Then comes the absolute best line of the movie:

Duncan: You dare threaten her life?
Skeletor: I DARE ANYTHING!

A good comedy director would, upon hearing this line, instruct the good guys to pause, look at each other, and start snickering loudly. Skeletor would be all, "What? WHAT? What are you guys laughing at!" And then He-Man, with his impeccable sense of timing, would say, "We laugh ANYTHING!" and the heroes would really lose it and start rolling around on the ground, hooting until they cried. No, this doesn't happen. Curses.

More cute flirting between Skelly and He-Man. Skelly wants the good guys to throw down their weapons (yeah right), and He-Man says, "It's not them you want. It's me. Always me." I'm sensing unrequited love on Skeletor's part; can a half-corpse truly love a mountain of oily muscles? Maybe so. Maybe. Evil-Lyn looks upset - she wishes Skelly wanted her as much as he does this big lunk - and Skeletor summons the whole of his acting prowess to silence He-Man. "SILENCE!" he screams.

Evil-Lyn spots Gwildor's key, and much battle ensues. Quick question: if the bad guys already have a key, and the good guys already know a back way into the castle, why do the bad guys want the second key so… badly? Back to the battle, the stormtroopers are mowed down, all the while shooting ineffectively at posts, columns and random acts of furniture. Skelly looks a bit lost in the background, like he doesn't know what exactly to do, but he does know that if he leaves to go to the bathroom, it might be demoralizing to the troops. Our heroes seem concerned to egress the castle, although the enemy troopers aren't really any threat, and there's a free buffet after the fight for all those involved. Duncan badgers Gwildor, who's been punching buttons for about ten minutes now with no noticeable accomplishment, into getting the key going and to take them out of there, "Anywhere!" Nifty special effects happen, and a portal is opened. Time to kick the tires and light the fires!

Well, if He-Poopy Pants didn't start dragging his heels, "No! I won't leave her!" "Her" most likely being the Sorceress and not Skeletor, who admittedly does have his drama queen days. He-Man? Yeah, if this was the cartoon, I could see you wanting to stick around to save the Sorceress. She was pretty hot. Pickles, on the other hand, looks like your best friend's mom who recently welded a chandelier onto her skull. Not as hot. Just thank your blessings and go. The good guys pause long enough to kill another 15 troopers or so, who have yet to hit anything resembling human flesh. Skeletor looks dismayed, but still isn't doing a heck of a lot, other than yelling "Stop him! He's my precious! My pretty little pony! My Rainbow Brite of joy! My Strawberry Shortcake of happiness!" Well, maybe the first two words of that. I tend to ad-lib.

As the heroes dive into the portal, you'll be interested to note that the incoming laser beams actually bend and are diverted by the hole (instead of being sucked into it, which is what I assumed would've happened). Gwildor's key gets shot, he drops it, He-Man grabs the troll and they dive into the portal. Two stormtroopers do a running dive for the key, but a grappling hook shoots out of the portal, snags the key and retrieves it. Yes, because when you're using an interdimensional portal to travel between worlds, you have a lot of time to pull out a grappling hook, turn around, and fire it blindly back from whence you came. Skeletor is understandably upset. He tells Evil-Lyn to "monitor the frequencies" to see if the key will be used again. So… just asking here, but what sort of equipment do you have that can monitor Cosmic Keys from anywhere in the universe and through all dimensions? And does it get cable? 16:44

Getting sprayed by Gwildor's ear water is the next best thing to chocolate

And thus our heroes - and this film's limited budget - find themselves on cheap, affordable Earth and all of its shooting locations. Gwildor lands in the mud, head first. Duncan and Teela laugh at him, for which I'm eternally grateful. Gwildor starts whining about suffocating, at which Teela rebukes him and takes up a handful of mud (!) and smells it and starts rubbing it on her hand (!!). I guess she wants to prove that mud is not harmful. Through all this, He-Man is on his haunches, in "thoughtful, concerned psychiatrist" mode. He truly cares. Gwildor holds his nose and blows water all over the other three through his ears, like a whale with two blowholes. The heroes sort of laugh this off, which was probably mandated by the producers who wrote the cast notes like, "You MUST find Gwildor very, very funny at anything he does, because the kids only come for Gwildor. And some half-naked erotic whipping, but we'll talk about that later."

He-Man good-naturedly asks Gwildor where they are, but you just know that he's about two minutes away from pulling out the troll's fingernails to extract (heh) a confession. Gwildor has no idea; the portal could've dumped them on any planet in any galaxy. Guess it's good they struck the planetary jackpot instead of being thrown onto a liquid metal surface of a planet with gas that would sear their internal organs within a few seconds, huh? At this point, they realize they lost the key in the fall. He-Man reads from his script: "Perimeter search, each of us take a sector!" I'm not sure he knows the meaning of many of those words. Then Duncan senses an incoming "alien" life form, stands up stealthily to scan it loudly, and the big joke reveal is that it's a cow. Yup, Mr. Moo, wandering the woods, all by his lonesome. Let me ask you this, when's the last time you just randomly encountered a cow? Gwildor starts mooing back at it, in an attempt to communicate. HA — you find him funny.

"What are we going to do?" Duncan asks. I thought you guys were searching the perimeter by sectors, but maybe that got boring for the 0.1 seconds you spent doing it. He-Man goes into a lengthy (for him) speech that they must find the key, get back, rescue the Sorceress, watch "Seinfeld" reruns, and do laundry. I think the filmmakers kept assuming that their key audience would lose track of this elaborate plot after a minute or so, and hence the numerous recaps. Duncan, not sarcastically, calls Skeletor's minions "crack troops". Maybe because their pants hang so low? Anyway, the heroes split up to search, with a fruity wave of a hand and "Good Journey". Teela heads to the mall. 20:09

I'll be there for you, when you buy a value meal

Switch scene to Robby's Ribs 'n' Chicken, understandably the hottest spot in this one-stoplight town. We are immediately yanked inside to be subjected to… Courtney Cox! And the Coxateers! In her pre-Friends, pre-Scream salad days, Courtney is on fire with a smile of joy and a head full of poofy hair. Now, I have many issues with the Friends phenomenon, not the least of which is how often my wife makes me watch it with her, but I'd say the third most irritating character was Monica. Yes, I'd love all of my friends to be anal mothers-in-training, but we just can't be that lucky.

Courtney Cox IS Julie, a fast food server on her last day of the job. After completing an order, she turns to her friend (who looks so startlingly like Linda Hamilton from The Terminator that I actually had to look up the cast list), and wistfully moans that she's gonna actually miss sprinkling French fries with salt and cleaning up ketchup-related pant stains. Behind her, some vastly cool dude is playing Ms. Pac-Man. I rock at that game. Julie's friend consoles her that they have fast food in Jersey. Jersey? As in, New? I honestly didn't realize people immigrated to NJ, which I always envision as a sinking, exploding, haunted ship filled with millions of rats desperately seeking escape. No, I really didn't just compare all NJ residents to rats, it was just a metaphor for their plight. My point is, Julie is screwed. Julie's friend makes a big deal out of giving her a going away present, which turns out to be a silly little piece of "don't break up with that cute guy you're going out with" advice. Yeah, how much did that cost ya? It's the thought that counts, my patootie.

Obviously, this is a hastily-packed exposition scene. Julie's leaving town, Julie's leaving her boyfriend, Julie's changing her clothes three feet away from the customers. Um, what? I've personally worked at many fast food joints, and I don't remember a special changing room that was located off the kitchen behind a swinging saloon-style door. Heck, I'd certainly miss working at this place if I left! Julie goes on about getting "3000 miles away and starting fresh". We're not quite sure why she's leaving, but again, New Jersey? I don't think they've had anything fresh there since 1642. 21:28

Julie boards Kevin's shuttlecraft, a statement which would've been at least mildly funny had I pre-established that Kevin is played by Star Trek Voyager's Robert Duncan McNeill. Now, you just hate me a little. For a couple on the verge of breaking up, they both seem pretty chipper; he's mostly concerned with her coming to his sound check, and she's got a big ol' bucket of ribs on her lap. They drive off to the cemetery, so Julie can say goodbye to her parents. Now, either her parents work at a cemetery for a living, or Julie's about to engage in an exercise of extreme redundancy. "Goodbye… again. Sort of. Going off to Jersey. As in 'New'. Maybe land myself a rent-controlled apartment and have five other people constantly flitting in and out of my life."

Probably the only movie in which fried chicken is retrieved via grappling gun

After they leave, Teela is seen lurking in the bushes with her gun drawn. She walks up behind Duncan, who draws his gun in a huff. "You're not supposed to be in my sector!" he pouts. MOM! He's IN MY SECTOR! Duncan wants food. Gwildor wants food and shoots his grappling gun to hook a bucket of ribs from the backseat of a convertible, where a couple is making out. These are the heroes entrusted to save the universe, by the way, putting their mission on pause to grab some fast food. After a couple bites, Duncan lets it out that they're all being carnivores, which for some reason really disgusts Teela and Gwildor. Guess Eternia is vegan. Duncan is phased not in the least. Teela scoffs at Earth being "barbaric", which is ironic considering that she follows a guy who has not just a slight bit of resemblance to Conan. They return to their sectors. What the hell is a sector? 24:32

Cemetery. Julie is all weepy, upset that it's their fault her parents died in a plane crash. Was she piloting? The flight attendant? Tower control? Nay, she just upset their schedules so that they took the fatal flight. Julie wishes that she could "change things", but Kevin squashes that with an ironic "that only happens in fairy tales." Dude, I'm feeling a MAJOR Care Bear shine coming on here! On their way out of the cemetery, they find the Cosmic Key. Julie's somewhat excited, but Kevin just about goes bananas over it, thinking that it's a Japanese synthesizer. 26:30

Eternia. Skeletor sits on his throne, hugging his own Key, thinking of writing yet another epic love sonnet to his one true love, entitled "If you had me, you wouldn't need to wrap a cape around your shoulders no more". Evil-Lyn informs Darth Pouty that they've found the signal, and is ordered to prepare an advance team to go in. 27:04

Blending in perfectly, a half-naked caped He-Man rushes through the town with laser gun drawn. He might as well have a car following him with loudspeakers continually blaring "NOT FROM AROUND HERE, IS HE?" Meanwhile, Batman and Robin… er, Kevin and Julie are hanging out at their school's gym, which displays a banner for "Around the World Fantasy". Which is, I assume, either a dance or a poorly-named band. Perhaps an adult video audition room. I'm just embarrassed I've typed more than ten pages of this stuff, and I'm not even a half-hour into the movie.

Women, no matter how pretty you are, this will be you at age 81.

Julie is looking around hesitantly, as if hearing the audience asking her, "Weren't you LEAVING already?" and she has no good answer. Kevin plays some bad synth. Whatever happened to synth players? Kevin hooks the Cosmic Key up to an amp (?) which makes it display little holographic doodles. Julie is so stinkin' impressed. But apparently "amping" the key makes it easier for the bad guys in the Death Star to track them down, so not a good move there. "Excellent," Evil-Lyn smirks. Wait a minute for Doctor Bring-Down! "You are too easily pleased," Skelly moans. "Do you forget time is of the essence?" Again, why? They have a Key, they have the Sorceress and the castle, what more do they need? Taco Bell? Evil-Lyn shows off the mercenary expeditionary force heading for earth: Blade (whose outfit puts the Shredder to shame), Zarod (standard lizard-in-helmet guy), The Beastman (whose name really is Gerald), and… wait for it… Karg. Karg is my favorite, because he boasts a truly spectacular mane of white hair, of such stature that it would make most 80's hair metal guitarists weep in shame. Karg's hair also resembles my grandmother's. "Hmm," Skelly ad-libs. "A curious quartet." I don't know why, but the way he says this is disgustingly funny. Skelly preps the group with another talk, and then gives the casual order, "Open the door. Do not fail me!" I bet he says this at drive-thrus: "Cheeseburger Happy Meal. Do not fail me!" 29:44

Back in the gym, Kevin's gone all orgasmic over the Key. He leaves and Julie stays behind to absorb the atmosphere of the gym, because she's leaving before graduation. No, don't ask WHY again. It's getting old. She looks wistfully at a locket with her parents inside (they apparently give those out, standard, at funeral homes as a freebie if both your parents die in a plane crash that is somehow your fault). Alas! A portal opens up and Blade comes through with several stormtroopers. Julie is alarmed, but not quite as much as we'd expect for the first witness of a planetary invasion. She walks forward (!) and calls out "Carl?" The Beastman jumps out of the portal. Not Carl. The school janitor gets beat up, the first and last victory these bad guys will ever see. Julie gets shot at a bit, but a wall of amps shields her from excessive sunburn. In this scene we also see that Karg is wearing a white furry shawl - no, I am not kidding. Shawl. Loads of rampaging, chasing, screaming and Pepsi product placement follows. Julie chucks a convenient bottle of ammonia into The Beastman's face (sizzle). He does not immediately flush his eyes out as my chemistry teacher instructed. It's interesting to note that here, Blade goes all-out homicidal in his efforts to "capture" Julie, including chopping through a stage and launching wrist-darts into a door. But really, nothing beats good ol' Karg, who now sports a nifty Captain Hook hook on the end of his left arm. The camera takes a few seconds to show the gym burning. No graduation for you! 33:01

"Let my muscles hug you!"

Not that this is surreal or anything, but He-Man is still jogging around suburbia, holding out a little gadget and certainly not looking like someone casing out homes to break into and slaughter every living resident within. He hears Julie calling for help; Julie, who is on the run, makes a poor choice to enter a suburban junkyard (hm). Blade enthusiastically cuts the chain link fence in twain, his purpose in life revealed: fences must die. Julie goes on to run into the heavy, oil-slicked arms of He-Man, who tries to calm her with his soft, lilting voice. "Don't be afraid, I won't hurt you," he says. Yeah. Until he slurps your brain through your nostril, but that's only common sense. Julie spazzes out and he hugs her tenderly, a key signature of any action sequence. It worked for Star Wars, it can work here. Even though she is fully capable of walking by herself, He-Man hoists Julie into his arms and bears her away, perhaps to a romance novel cover shoot. He-Man uses his He-Ears to pinpoint the bad guys, who are bellowing as if in a third grade production of Annie. He gives his laser pistol to Julie and darts off (hint to He-Man: just because you have a cape, doesn't mean you can fly).