Red Sonja: A review

The number one movie the year I was born was “Back to the future”.  Waaaaaay on the other end of the scale in the same year came a film called “Red Sonja” a sorcery/action movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger and a pre-Celebrity Rehab Brigitte Nielsen.

The bestest movies have romance novel cover posters!

The movie begins with the narrator telling us about an evil queen (I forget her name but it’s really not important) stomping into some podunk medieval village, spotting Sonja’s mullet and deciding “hey, she’d make a great lesbian pet” but Red Sonja, despite her telltale mullet, wasn’t having any of it and scarred up Evil Queen’s face.  Being Evil, the queen had her soldiers violate Sonja, kill everyone and burn the little podunk village.  Some glowing ghost takes pity, visits Sonja and gives her redhead rage revenge magic and we’re off and running.

Does the carpet match the drapes?  Yes, because they’re both on her head.

Next we jump to a priestess cult/hot lesbians in sheets/monastery of  swimsuit models who guard a glowing green ball that can destroy everything.  The order of babes decide to throw the glowing ball away, down their toilet/magic portal (it’s a stone hole, so it’s probably both) .  But you can’t have all those hot virgins in chainmail mini dresses crammed in a castle and NOT expect to attract Evil Queens.  Queen Gedren (that’s her name, I just looked it up) caught a wiff of all the estrogen and candle smoke and saddled up. Gedren appears on the scene in her best death metal finery and a custom mask to cover the scar from Sonja’s sharp pointy “hell no!”  Gedren could have just restyled her german s&m mistress bowlcut to cover the scar, but instead she apparently phoned up Jean Paul Gaultier and said “make me a Kane mask and make it SHINY”

Gedren has her man army slaughter all the babes and has her attractive female consort touch the glowing ball after it eats a soldier, TA DA, only women can touch it!!  Evil Queen orders the remaining hotties thrown down the magic toilet hole and the glowing ball stolen.  A single priestess escapes out a hand dandy secret cave door and runs away but is followed and blah blah blah, anyways, she’s shot with a retarded amount of arrows and Arnie shows up on his horsie just in time to catch her.  She tells Arnie to find Sonja and Arnie, using his conan GPS gallops off.

Arnie finds Sonja doing weapons training with Elderly Asian Padme Amidala .

Red Sonja hesitates because she needs to make it very clear she trusts no man, and no man can have her (because I’m sure at 6 feet tall with a mullet she’s just fending them off) but when he says her sister is full of arrows and passed out under a tree, she agrees to go, but on her own horse.

Her sister (I don’t remember her name, so we’ll call her Bjork) explains the glowing ball and Queen Kane and promptly dies, Red Sonja can’t cry because she’s dead inside and refusing Arnie’s help, gallops off.

“what?  You like my crown?  I made it myself during lesbian priestess craft hour.  I have a matching belt!”

There’s some battle with a fat bearded guy that wants Red Sonja to blow him to get through his gate. Sonja promptly tells him he smells and stabs him and kills half his henchmen  and Arnie appears, and kills the other half.  They run into some asian kid who is a prince and has a loyal servant lumbering around spoiling him after Gedren used her stolen volleyball to flatten his kingdom.  So comic relief, battle, long walking scenes, midget prince gets a hard on for Red Sonja, she doesn’t kill him for it etc.

“See, the bigger your sword, the more women know you’re overcompensating!”

There’s a bridge made of animal bones, everyone has to climb a stone wall to get to Gedren, there was something about a wizard that can teleport evil queens.  Oh, and Queen Gedren has a pet spider the size of my boston terrier.  Thanks to the phenomenal special effects, the spider vibrates when petted.

Half squat is as useful as you think he is…

The basketball of doom gains power from light, so Gedren decides to steal all the candles from every catholic church scene in every movie and uses them to line the room where she keeps her glowing stolen things.

Gedren later took her kryptonite and went to work for Zod

Gedren dies exactly how you think she will…

*poke*

…Red Sonja makes the announcement that the only man that can “have” her is one who defeats her in battle…

Pictured: foreplay

After an exhausting sword fight, which I do have to say was believable, Sonja gets over her former trauma and smooches Arnie’s fleshy Austrian face and I assume they both go on to produce an army of extremely muscular Aryan children.

“Doesn’t my mullet just blow your mind?”

 

As you can tell from the minute detail I went into, I love this movie.  Brigitte is a stunning woman and athletic, she has screen presence and outshines Arnie easily.  The story is entertaining and the visuals are cheeserific.  I watched it twice before my husband decided to delete it off the PVR.

Despite the fact that Arnold himself has said that he used to make his kids watch “Red Sonja” as punishment and Maria Shriver told Arnold at the premiere that the film would be the end of his career, I strongly recommend it.

5 poutines out of 5