Rubber

An essay on storytelling and spectatorship within When Inanimate Objects Attack schlock - one infused with the haunting aura and disillusionment of a post–"Easy Rider" road movie - Rubber is some kind of miracle.

If you meet the fiendishly deadpan Rubber halfway, its assured mix of cinephile artiness and grindhouse spoof will offer some oddball surprises.

Picture Monty Python writing an unusually odd "Twilight Zone" episode directed by surrealist Luis Buñuel. Or just empty your mind of all sense: This is Rubber.

It's a fun one to talk about -- if only for the opportunity to shake your head in amused disbelief at what you just saw.

Though it's undoubtedly ingenious, for such a clever movie, it's a shame Rubber couldn't be more fun.

To the movie's small credit, there's very little grasping for larger significance: It's a dumb horror film, complete with a sexy female lust object (Kaboom's Mesquida) undraping for a shower scene.

Rubber could have been a modest horror novelty, a wicked, malevolent version of "The Red Balloon."

Truly Brilliant, my favorite part was the scene when Robert was watching NASCAR, it shows robert's character and it almost made me cry when he was shot. Such emotion and bam he is reincarnated into a tricycle, MASTERPIECE, Great movie, awesome great acting my favorite movie of this Century.

Off in the remote desert outskirts somewhere, an abandoned truck tire springs to life and manifests a degree of psychokinetic force. Humming and vibrating as it rolls, the wheel bursts beer bottles, then small animals, then human heads, while a gallery of curious spectators use binoculars to eavesdrop from a safe distance. They’ve been gathered to watch “the film,” a decidedly ambiguous special attraction, and this absurd turn of events has left the whole gang buzzing. It doesn’t take a genius to spot the metaphor. Certainly not after the opening scene, when an actor directly addresses the camera (conveniently positioned amongst the gawkers) and evangelizes about the need for “no reason” in cinema. His point seems to be this: many well-regarded movie plots feature events that happen by chance, so here’s a bunch of random stuff with no explanation. Why can this tire make things explode into bloody hunks? No reason. Why did someone poison the audience? No reason. If that explanation was good enough for Spielberg and Polanski, it should also be good enough for Rubber. Right? Well, sometimes it is. The express permission to just let go and enjoy the ride is a welcome change, especially for a premise that’s so bafflingly, intentionally stupid. Gratuitous bloodshed offers cheap rewards, and in that respect, Rubber certainly pays out. Its frequent, self-aware commentary sometimes feels too cute or unwieldy, demanding at least as much time as the rolling rubber monster, but that’s all in good fun and I took it as such. Everything seems to be nearing a spectacular climax, particularly when the participants of “the film” think the show’s over and have some fun with the impermanence of their own roles, but that dash of irreverence is short-lived and we’re almost immediately scolded for enjoying it. I can’t tell if this film's hate is reserved for the tropes that power its sub-genre or the audience at large. Maybe a little of both? Hey, maybe it hates loud-mouthed film critics like me, for trying to drag something intelligent out of a big, dumb exploitation movie! Whatever the agenda (if there even is an agenda), it meets mixed success. The wheelie bits are shallow, but silly fun. The meta stuff is sometimes thumped too hard, and the overwhelming sense of nihilism can be exhausting, but without those it wouldn’t be much of a picture. I enjoyed more than I didn’t, and I appreciated the impetus to try something so decidedly different. I just wish it weren’t so on-the-nose.

I wanted to hate this film. But I couldn't. It's so random and plot less that it seems absolutely unnecessary to create. Yet I did like it. The way everything fit together all made sense, no matter how dumb it sounded.

Bizarre movie about a homicidal tire roaming the desert looking for **** I just dream this? Was it nothing more than a bad dream come to life? Well...that's as good of a reason of any as to why I saw this thing. It does have a sense of humour, but other than that...well I'm glad it was short.

Rubber, aside from being almost migraine inducing-ly pretentious and devoid of humor, is dripping with contempt for its audience. The story of a tire rolling around the desert and killing anything in its path only pretends not to have a point. The real target is the viewer. Critics and intellectuals will attempt to uncover deeper meanings while casual viewers will scratch their heads and wonder what the point is. The sad truth is that the filmmakers have convinced us to watch 90 minutes of nothing.