I have met my parents, and they are me. This somewhat disturbing revelation came home to me last week, when I was typing away in the office here, grumbling to myself about the crap music booming out from Emily’s room, and listening to Punk and Disorderly, a compilation featuring such acts as Blondie, The Stranglers, The Sex Pistols, etc. Y’know – proper music. But I suddenly realised that punk happened 25 years ago, and what I was doing was, in chronological terms, the same thing as my parents listening to Bill Haley and the Comets when I was Emily’s age. And they said that was “proper music” too…

Fortunately, this realisation was tempered by a few secondary realisations – not the least being that what Emily listens to is, indeed, crap. There is something strangely disturbing about hearing a thirteen-year old singing Voulez-Vous Coucher Avec Moi?, the latest single from Christina Aguilera (or, as Chris likes to snarl, Christina Aguisluta), blithely unaware of what the title means, or that it’s about a prostitute in New Orleans. It’s hard to work out what’s worse: the massacre of poor, innocent, defenseless old songs, which never harmed anyone in their lives, or her original tunes. Put it this way, Aguisluta’s apprenticeship on The Mickey Mouse Club didn’t go to waste; I await her cover of It’s a Small World with trepidation.

I also like to think I can hold my own with the youth of today. While my own tastes are for industrial bands like Nine Inch Nails (and I can freak most teenagers out by hitting the truly hardcore stuff such as Ultraviolence), I know who Limp Bizkit are – why they are, admittedly remains something of a mystery, but that information appears to be strictly on a need-to-know basis. Had a nice conversation just last night with John, one of Robert’s friends, about Metallica and he played me a cheerful little ditty off one of their albums, which was all about the meaning, derivation and usage of the word “Fuck”. It was amusing, in a way only teenage boys can truly appreciate, although there wasn’t much of a tune to it, as my parents would no doubt have tartly observed.

Mind you, while I am listening to the abrasive tech-noir noise of Frontline Assembly, Robert has got Robbie Williams’ easy-listening sounds on, which would seem to be somewhat miswired – hell, even my mother likes Robbie Williams. [To his street-credit, Robert did also borrow my Eminem CD – giving me a strange but unmistakeable feeling of satisfaction.] And it’s usually Emily who has to come into our room late at night and tell us to turn the stereo down, rather than the other way round And that’s despite my tolerance for N’Sync, stopping at about the 2.5 dB mark – there’s no such thing as “quiet enough” there.

Our ability in areas like movies also help to lend us credibility: the discovery that someone older than 25 actually saw Scary Movie comes as a revelation to some teenagers. Though whenever Robert tries to talk us into seeing a film, two words prove sufficient to shut him up: Battlefield Earth. He didn’t just see it at the cinema…he went back and saw it again, and we aren’t going to let him forget it in a hurry. I look forward to introducing him to Showgirls, so he can appreciate what an enjoyably bad movie should really be like.

Things like this give me hope for the future. And when they talk about the awesome new actor called Chow Yun-Fat, I think we may perhaps be permitted a small smirk.

Dir: Lorenzo Doumani
Star: Sophia-Adella Hernandez, Edouardo Yanes, Tony Plana, William McNamara, Maria Conchita Alonzo

I was going to write this article as the Knockout drinking game, with contestants having to take a swig each time a boxing cliché appears – but an interest in the health of readers prevents me from so doing, because this film is so full of them, that you’d be dead of alcoholic poisoning before the end of the first act. I don’t know whether Doumani had never seen a boxing movie before (his career gives no reason to suggest he has, including such highlights as Bug Buster), or simply chose to combine them all into one. For this is the kind of diabolical script you would get if you distilled every boxing flick down.

The only significant difference is that here, the hero is…well, a heroine, Belle (Hernandez). Though nobody really bothers to mention it, because she’s so busy slogging her way through the usual problems that have bedevilled pugilistic wannabes since Edison was turning the crank: unsupportive family, a dubious managers, gym-owners doubtful of your talent, a ferocious opponent, etc. So, here goes with an approximate listing, in dialogue and images, of the things you’ll have seen a million times before – just never in such distilled and condensed strength.

The Characters

• “Was papa a great boxer?”
  “He was the best…”
• “What should I be when I grow up?”
  “You can be whatever you want, because nothing is impossible. That’s for you to find out, and once you do, don’t let anyone hold you back. Let your light shine…”.
• Father (Plana) is a cop, who works nights so he can spend the days “with the kids at the gym”.
• “That’s what your Mom used to say. Think she’d be proud of how we turned out?” Yep, Mum (Miss Venezuela 1975, Maria Conchita Alonzo) is dead – but do you think that’s going to stop her from turning up? Chance would be a fine thing.
• Dad bravely talks two Hispanic kids into putting their guns down. I think he largely bores them into submission, with a monologue including the following: “I know you’re scared, but this isn’t the way…You have your whole lives ahead of you. What’s it gonna be: do you lay the weapon down, or do we lay you in the ground?”

The Plot

• Belle’s home-girl Sandra is a boxer – at a fight againt Tanya ‘The Terminator’ Tessaro (real-life fighter Fredia Gibbs) we also meet Michael DiMarco, whose business card might as well read “Slimy Manager”.
• Needless to say, Tessaro destroys Sandra – thanks largely to what one review described as Sandra’s “leading with her face”. The film, inevitably (a word that will crop up a lot in this review, so get used to it), goes into slow-mo as Sandra collapses to the floor with a “NOOOOOOOOOO…SANDRAAAAAA” from Belle. Cut to a hospital bed, where Belle says things like “You were always the strong one…I’m gonna take care of you.” If I was Sandra, I’d be looking up Kevorkian’s number in my Rolodex about now, rather than sitting through:
  “Do you believe in fate…that things were meant to be…that everyone has a destiny?”
  “I hope Sandra’s destiny isn’t to die. Or be a vegetable because of me.”
  “It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. She loves it. She lives for it…In the ring, that’s where she lives…The only thing crazy in life, is not living it.” Is it just me, or does it seems rather crass to say that while your friend is in intensive care?
• Equally inevitably, Belle signs up with DiMarco – “Boxing – I guess I’ve always wanted to do it.” He takes her to see Ron Regent, wheelchair-bound promoter played by Paul Winfield, who’s about the best actor present despite having to handle dialogue like:
  “So, you think you got the goods, huh?”
  “Yeah, I got the goods.”

The Difficulties

• Dad tries to dissuade her: “Professional boxing is brutal…You’re talking crazy. I don’t want to hear any more of this”.
• She keeps training anyway. Oh, what a surprise.
• The only element underplayed to this point is her mother’s deat…no, hang on – what’s this flashback?
  “I don’t have good news. The tests reveal you have a malignant tumor in your frontal lobe.”
  “So how much time do I have?
  “It’s hard to say. But not long.”
  —-
  “You have got to be strong…let’s appreciate the little time we have left.
  “But you gotta promise me something…you gotta let her find a way to let her shine…”
• Inevitably, Dad comes along to first fight, inspiring her to victory.
• Then we get a montage of further victories, Belle tending to Sandra, Ron listening to money, fake mag covers, and the usual training sequences, all of which leads to:

Revenge

• But first, Sandra regains consciousness. “The doctors – they say that I’ll never walk again”
• Belle fights with DiMarco because he wants to keep her from fighting Tessaro: “I thought you were different..but you’re just another ungrateful wetback bitch. You were just another ignorant barrio lowlife. You’re nothing without me.”
• Ron Regent arranges the fight with Tessaro instead – when announcing this, Belle pretends to be going to Las Vegas to marry DiMarco. How amusing!
• Another training montage.
• “Thanks for being there, Dad”. Except he isn’t, because the “next few days are all hype, but I’ll be there for the fight…in your corner…”
• And, inevitably, he won’t. He gets shot by drug-scum as he tries to protect a kid.
• Cue more slow-mo and – a particularly crass touch, this – blood spattering across a magazine cover with Belle’s picture on it.
• Funeral footage. “He loved you just like a son”.
• “I get the feeling he’s gonna be there at the fight”.
• Stultifyingly-stilted chat from Tessaro: “What’s my name? The Terminator! What am I gonna do to her? Terminate her!” And they claim boxing doesn’t promote brain-damage.

The Big Fight

• Belle has a glowing backlit vision – is she going to be abducted by aliens? Sadly not: it’s only her Mum and Dad, telling her, inevitably, to “Let your light shine”.
• Tessaro’s ring-entrance is like a discard from Grace Jones, complete with feather head-dress and dance routine, totally destroying her credibility and threat.
• Shots of Sandra, shouting “Get up, Belle – c’mon!”. That’ll help.
• One last montage: round cards, trainer in corner, and occasional boxing, all shot in a manner that is startling only in its tedium.
• With Tessaro losing, she butts Belle, forcing the bout towards a hugely contrived conclusion
• Albeit after another glowing, Let Your Light Shine-y, vision.
• Belle has just one more round to knock Tessaro out – will she do it?
• Any guesses?

Right down to the final scene, where flowers are laid on Mom and Dad’s grave, this film is crass, predictable and jaw-droppingly badly written. You can’t really blame the cast for this – they are all trying pretty hard, it’s just the material that doesn’t leave any room for improvement. Even though it came out before Girlfight, it is a waste of space on every level: Doumani’s lack of script-writing talent would get him thrown off any self-respecting daytime soap. His trust fund was allegedly taken away and poured into The Cotton Club, but on the showing here, I think it might have been higher forces at work, trying desperately to keep him out of the movie business.

Footnotes:

• Some other, just as savage, reviews:
  • “0 stars”
  • “possibly the worst boxing movie ever made”
  • 5 out of 100 – “This grade-Z programmer is a painfully earnest, clichéd, amateurish waste of time”
  • 0 stars – “could make you swear off movies”.
  • “a relentlessly stereotypical script”
  • “a burning hell of extreme sincerity” – a relatively kind review!
• An interview with Doumani
• Fredia Gibbs’ site
• Other women’s boxing movies

Yes: poof balls. I think this is one product found in the local supermarket here, which will not be making its way across the Atlantic, at least not under that name. They’re harmless enough – both literally and figuratively being simply soft foam, moulded into the shape of footballs, etc. for indoor use – but you can only presume no Britons were involved in the naming of it. It’s certainly something to point out to any visiting Brits, just as Chris was mightily amused to discover that we keep faggots in the frozen foods section at Somerfield.

Over the past four months, I’ve come to appreciate keenly the truth of the statement about Britain and America being two nations divided by a common language. This is not necessarily a bad thing: road-rage is a lot safer when the recipient of your abuse doesn’t understand what you’re saying, especially in a country where the carrying of guns is one step short of mandatory. Smile as you stick your V’s up at someone, and greet them with a shout of “Oi! Tosser!”, and you’ll probably get away with it. How I sniggered the first time I heard “wanker” crop up in Buffy the Vampire Slayer – albeit in the Dick Van Dyke-reborn accent of Spike.

I think the crossover is perhaps easier the way I’ve done it, going from Britain to America, because of the huge amount of American culture that we got to see in the UK. I imagine pretty much everyone knows that Starsky and Hutch slid across the hood of their car, filled it with gas and locked criminals in the trunk. Actually, I never recall either of them shutting perps up like that, but if they had, it would have been in the trunk. And definitely not in the boot.

You might think that simple things like chemical elements would be common on both sides of the Atlantic. But, no. At position 13 on the periodic table in Robert’s chemistry book is something called aluminum. Note that carefully: not aluminium, but aluminum. This explains why, when I asked for aluminium foil in the supermarket once, the expression on the poor assistant was about what you’d expect to get, after explaining the Theory of Relativity to your faithful pet spaniel: a desperate desire to please, mixed with absolute and utter incomprehension. [Interestingly, aluminium was the accepted spelling in the States up until 1925, when the American Chemical Society decided to change. Never let it be said these editorials aren’t educational] You gradually get used to this – last time I went in, I was mouthing “garbage sacks” all the way round the aisles, just in case I couldn’t find what I used to call rubbish bags.

Even where we have the same word, pronunciation may not necessarily be the same. Garage: is it GA-rage or ga-RAGE? Man-DA-tory or MAN-da-TORY? We may be easily amused, but many are the happy hours Chris and I have spend debating such issues. It’s not an argument as such, because neither of us have the slightest intention of changing – and I wouldn’t want Chris to change, any more than she would want me to change. For what seemed normal in Britain is now a badge of my difference and independence; when you get complete strangers suddenly asking where your accent is from, it freaks you out the first time, but eventually, it becomes something to which you warm.

Personally, I wear such differences as a badge of honour (note spelling, with a “u” – much as this Yanqui spell-checker might disagree!). Warm beer, fish and chips…and an interesting pronounciation of the word “vitamin”. Doesn’t it make you proud to be British?