Real-Time Review: Cleopatra 2525

Little known fact

In the year 7510,
If God's a-comin', he ought to make it by then
Maybe he'll look around himself and say,
"Guess it's time for the Judgement Day."

... that's because 7510 is the year that God found an extant copy of this show, and decided humanity had pretty much sunk as low as it could go.

The Chef's Take:

Real-Time Review: Cleopatra 2525 - "A Quest For Firepower"

I recently bought the boxed set of Earth 2. This review is not about that show. Included on the set are bonus
episodes of Sliders and Cleopatra 2525. If you've never heard of the latter, you're lucky. Imagine Power Rangersas aimed at horny 16-year-old boys, and you'll understand this show. Its key features are women in scanty futuristic armor battling bad CGI-rendered machines. Even Gina Torres, the Amazon goddess herself, can't save this.

The menu has a summary of the episode, which mentions an exotic dancer (that would be the “Cleopatra” of the show’s
title)who goes in for a boob job and ends up cryogenically frozen for five hundred years. No, really. Reactions from the rest of the crew:

Dylan: "Wow. Just 'no'. Sounds like it was done on a drunken bet."

John: "That is awesome. I'm positive I wrote this and was just dicking around and didn't want to write anything serious."

The Chef’s thoughts as the travesty rolls on:

• It opens by showing a bad CGI rendering of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Pull my finger.
  
• One minute in. Gina Torres is wearing pigtails. Goddamn pigtails. And goggles. She looks like the Bratz doll from Hell.
  
• Two or three minutes in (I forget which): horrible CGI spiderweb grappling things. Spider-Man called – he wants his shtick back.
  
• While we’re at it at around the two-minute mark, Sarge is skanky-looking. She also has a nervous twitch or a seizure when she fires her wrist gun-thing. It’s like she’s an epileptic who forgot her medication.
  
• At around five minutes, there are lots of terrible explosions. Lots of them. Michael Bay would be proud. Contrary to what Mr. Bay claims, this is not awesome.
  
• Just before the teaser ends, the ladies’ friend Horst turn out to be a "Betrayer", which is like a Terminator, but shittier. Sarge remarks that she had some “good times” with him. That means Sarge had sex with a machine. Rock.
  
• The theme song makes my ears bleed. There are no words to describe this.
  
• 6 minutes in, and the Cat-Man shows up. He looks like a really bad sentai villain. I wouldn’t buy a car from this guy, much less a kidney.
  
• Apparently, Cleopatra got frozen because of bad anesthesia. In the future, they will have a cure for malpractice, or so we hope.
  
• Maybe seven minutes in. Time loses all meaning watching something like this. The Cat-Man says, "I'll be down the hall." There is a distinct and meaningful pause, then he adds, "In the cat box." It's like the actor knew how bad that line was and wanted to wink at the audience about it. He's winking as hard as he can.
  
• 10 minutes: Someone pinch me. My whole world has been destroyed by watching this show.
  
• 12 minutes in: Really awful greenscreen falling, and more of the “no, we’re not ripping off Spider-Man” web shooter things. At this point, I’ve realized that my life has no meaning.
  
• Soon thereafter: Cleo reveals she went to community college and is an exotic dancer. What a winner. She must be
  destined to save the world. That, or to catch an STD.
  
• 15 minutes: Sarge remarks that Mauser is "Not even programmed for sex". So she likes robot sex. Or are all the men replaced by robots? Her next date will be with Johnny Five.
  
• 17 minutes: Another fight with Whore- er, Horst the Betrayer. More thumping porn bass music. Fighting also involves lesbian sex, I hope. My hopes are dashed, however.
  
• I kind of blacked out for the next few minutes, kind of like when I took that dare involving a beer bong and standing on my head. When I regained consciousness, I saw Sam Raimi’s name flash on the screen as a producer or somesuch bullshit.
  Did I miss seeing his Oldsmobile?
  

Overall, this must be the worst TV series I've ever seen. Mercifully, it was only a half hour long, but it left me feeling violated, like that time Richard Simmons trapped me in the men's room at the Ramada Inn and made me sweat to his oldies.

More notes...

I think you're thinking of the weird bat-people-things from Andromeda, maybe. Or possibly Farscape, but it's so obscure that if you ripped it off no one would ever know (a similar argument has been made with regards to Stargate supposedly ripping off Fringeworthy).

And really, the "in the cat box" line has got to be one of the most unintentionally hilarious pieces of dialog ever. Unintentional because it's meant to be funny in a juvenile and stupid sort of way, but the guy puts that big pause before it, like he just doesn't want to say it, but knows he has to say it or the director will pull the trigger on that flamethrower aimed at the heads of the actors' parents.

So do I...

So do I. It really does help to think that the only reason someone like Gina Torres would be involved in this kind of shit is Sam Raimi (who should know better) threatening Larry Fishburne's life.

NO.

That breaks my mind.

On the other hand, now I need to hear the theme song again just to see how much it truly breaks my mind.

Ah, that show takes me back to a time when it was believed that Sam Raimi and the Hercules cast could do no wrong...on obscure cable channels and at odd broadcast hours.