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DAVID CROSS & SAVE THE GREEN PLANET!
Can any one person save us? How active and aggressive does one have to get when no one is listening? How soon before everyone thinks you’re just a lunatic and stops listening? How soon before you agree and give up forever?
A bee-keeper and possible mannequin maker named Lee Byung-gu (character actor Shin Ha-kyun) kidnaps a wealthy businessman. Lee knows the man is an alien. His research is extensive. He’s assisted by his chubby circus performing girlfriend Su-ni (Hwang Jung-min). She’s like a child with dolls and an affinity for the song Over the Rainbow. There are ways to get an alien to talk and they’re both about to go to work.
David Cross’s early openings can be equally interesting. Sometimes he acts like a redneck who hates acts like his own, especially “potty mouth”. Sometimes he sings a Vegas show tune about his act that tangents into commentary about cosmonauts. Every act I’ve ever heard has been different, but something remains the same. David is a satirical agent for progressive change and has been for many years.
It isn’t long before the drugs he’s (not David Cross, but I can see how you might be confused) taking and the torture starts to get to Byung-gu’s girlfriend. She leaves sadly. The love loss is no distraction. The alien has plans to destroy our planet. Before anything, the alien’s head is shaved. That’s how he can communicate with the others.
David Cross pops up in movies like Sarah Silverman, usually a role where he’s playing a horrible person of some kind. He’s well known for Mr. Show, a sketch program that was like no other. Each sketch connected to the next and often the whole show was a circle. Co-hosted by Bob Odenkirk (Abe Lincoln) and co-written by Bill Odenkirk, Jay Johnston, Brian Posehn and others with long names, it was a cult hit. That means it was cancelled too quickly after being put on HBO very late at night. There was even a really funny film that had so many problems even David and Bob gave up on it before it made it to DVD. It gave me an old fashioned kick in the cunt.
Lee Byung-gu’s life is violent and tragic. His mother is in a coma and the alien Kang Man-shik (played by zen master with a similar name Baek Yun-shik) is partly responsible. His first girlfriend was beaten to death in workers’ strike. His mother killed his father. Lee Byung-gu’s dog eats his past test subjects. Each one he finds is not an alien. When a suspicious detective arrives and finds nothing, on the way out he sees a human bone with the dog. Honey, gravity and bees dispatch yet another in the way of saving the green planet.
David will be my hero for long stretches of his act, but then as the audience laughs less and less, he switches gears into something low-brow or silly. I think this happens with a lot of intelligent comics. Some comedians know their audience and fully pander. Some know their audience and semi-pander. But I feel like David doesn’t what to. He almost yells at them and himself at the same time. What the fuck is this political stuff? I came here to laugh! His book seemed the perfect time to throw it all out there. It’s a different audience. I was actually a bit disappointed. Some parts were really funny, I love the Mafia game. I just think he’s more intelligent than some of the material. I’ve been listening a long time.
The alien tells of a cure for Lee Byung-gu’s mother. He uses the time to break free and finds himself going through the journals of his disturbed host. It saddens him. As he’s about to be freed Lee Byung-gu returns. His mother is dead and he has nothing left. The businessman tells the story of our creation as if he were an alien. It’s unknown if he does this from the journals or because it’s true.
Sub Pop is a well-known Seattle music label. It released Nirvana’s first album as well as Soundgarden, being an important label for the grunge genre. Then suddenly, David Cross and a few other comedians were released on it. I thought it was really cool. There is a saying: Comedians all want to be rock stars and rock stars want to destroy Napster. Sorry still bitter. Often comedians find themselves self-releasing their comedy or on very tiny labels. Sub Pop, even if it has changed its principles, was a well-deserved step for a talented artist. I just hope for less Chipmunks and more satire.
It’s all a satire, the aliens, the torture, the blowing up of Earth to the saddest ending theme ever (Lee Dong-jun is phenomenally talented). It’s about working conditions, gangsters beating striking workers to death. It’s about our never-ending violence that will ultimately destroy us. A television, the opiate of the masses, flies out into space when the Earth blown up. It suddenly shows scenes of Lee Byung-gu’s youth. There is good here. We later learn to kill. We learn that money is everything; it’s the society we vote for every few years.
David is at a David crossroads. I just feel it. It’s easy for him to stop. Eddie Murphy just has to clock in. The paycheck is guaranteed no matter the script. If you’re at a show, and David Cross starts screaming at himself again, stand up and say this please: “No, wait, please go on. We’re listening this time. Hell, some of us might even do something.”
If you simply get thrown out, I apologize.
kocoreviews 