Rubber

So outside of the name of the movie making it sound dirtier than it actually is, I wasn't quite sure what to expect with Rubber. I mean, the basic premise is an anthropomorphic tire with psychokinetic abilities terrorizes everyone. Really, who wouldn't want to watch a movie with a plot summary like that? I'm sure you're having a hard time reading the rest of this post because you feel the immediate need to go watch it. 

Well, if you're still here, I congratulate you on your self control. I'm also going to go ahead and let you know:  there really is no good reason to watch this movie. Netflix has it categorized as a Comedy. Not only that, a French Comedy. So going by genre, you'd expect a bunch of surrendering, snooty french accents, and disdain for Americans. Or maybe that would be an American French Comedy. Either way, I'm not sure what was supposed to be funny, really. I didn't laugh hardly at all. I mean, looking around, it seems the idea was this movie was supposed to satirize gory horror movies and their audiences, but I guess I missed it. Sometimes I wonder if people who review movies take a movie like this, don't understand a damn thing that happened, and give it a high rating because obviously if they didn't understand it, there must have been some deep hidden meaning that elevates the movie above the common film. Apparently, everyone is a high-school English teacher. Oh, and I'm also unsure why it's classified as French since outside of the director and the leading lady, most everybody else in the movie was not French, or at least didn't give the impression they were French.

So we open with a police car swerving down a gravel road hitting roughly a dozen randomly place table chairs. The car stops, a policeman gets out of the trunk, retrieves a glass of water from the driver, and proceeds to deliver a short dissertation to the camera on the concept of "No Reason" and movies. His examples include why was E.T. brown (which, if I was a deep movie analyzer, I'd say was not for no reason, but to exemplify the plight of African-Americans in society...but I'm not), why is the President assassinated in JFK (because that's what happened in real life, and it would be weird to make a serious movie about the JFK assassination where he lives), as well as why don't we see people in Texas Chainsaw Massacre go to the bathroom or wash their hands (because that would be fuckin' boring and it's hard to take a pee break when Leatherface is sawing your legs off). Then he explains that this movie is "an homage" to "No Reason," which I guess all the chairs and trunk stuff is supposed to warn the viewer about. Anyway, after this speech, he pours the glass of water out, gets back in the trunk, and the car drives off. As the view shifts, it turns out that while he might have been addressing the viewer, he was also addressing a small crowd of spectators who are then handed binoculars to watch the "movie" by an assistant of some kind who's been waiting patiently for the policeman to finish.

The "movie" begins with Robert, the tire and main character, who from here on I'll refer to us Rubby. Why? No Reason. So Rubby begins life as a discarded tire in a junk pile. As he works out rolling on his own, he runs over a water bottle, then a scorpion. When he tries to run over a beer bottle, however, he finds it doesn't yield quite so easily. So, Rubby begins to quiver and the most annoying cicada noise sound effect ever let's us know that he's using his psychokinesis. The beer bottle shatters. Next, an aluminum can is taken down. Then a bunny, then a bird. Now that Rubby is on a roll (haha!), he's made his way to the road and spies a pretty girl driving an old VW convertible. Using Rubby's mind powers, he stalls her car, but as he's rolling to take his prize, he's struck from behind by a pickup driver. No worse for wear, Rubby dusts himself off and chases after his new lady love. When he passes by the truck driver getting gas down the road, Rubby uses his mental (steel-belted radial?) powers and pops the truck drivers melon à la Scanners.

While all this is going on, we randomly cut back to the spectators, who appear to be movie audience stereotypes. There's the movie buff know-it-alls, the annoying teenagers, the father and son, and an old guy in a wheelchair. There's a handful of other people, but for the most part they're pretty irrelevant. For the most part, they're just providing the random thoughts that go through one's mind while watching a movie such as Rubber.

So Rubby tracks Sheila, who from here on I'll refer to as Mrs. Pilkington. Why? No Reason. Mrs. Pilkington has gotten a room at a motel, and apparently left the door ajar. So Rubby (and the spectators) get a free show (which I'm not going to really complain too much about, regardless of the irrelevance and unnecessary nature of the scene). When Mrs. Pilkington gets out of the shower, she shuts the door in Rubby's face (tread?). Somehow, Rubby either breaks into or rents the room next door and proceeds to watch TV with the volume up too high.

The next day, Rubby is in the shower when housekeeping shows up. Figuring some jerk has made a mess of the room with this tire, she tosses Rubby out and begins cleaning the room. The motel owner's kid see Rubby get back up, go into the hotel room, and close the door where he, you guessed it, explodes the housekeeper's head. When Mrs. Pilkington heads to the pool for a quick 15 second swim, Rubby follows. When she leaves, he rolls into the pool and promptly sinks and begins to reflect on his life thus far. This provides a bit of discussion for the spectators.

Speaking of the spectators, since they're following the "movie" in real time, they've been out in the desert for several days. After several complaints of hunger, the assistant from earlier (for No Reason, Dr. Goggles) drops off a whole turkey for the spectators to eat. He also rented a room at the hotel and prepared the turkey from scratch (read: alive) for the spectators. Little do they know, the turkey has been poisoned as part of some master plan. So as they're watching Rubby soak at the bottom of the pool and the discovery of the headless housekeeping lady, they all begin to get stomach cramps, with the exception of the old guy in the wheel chair, who I'm going to refer to as Wheels (N.R.). Wheels didn't eat the turkey, so he survives and promises to finish watching the "movie" to put the other dying spectators at ease. 

So back to the motel. The police officer from earlier, Lieutenant Chad (from here on, Lord Chadwick), proceeds to tell everyone they've done a great job and they're free to go home since the spectators are dead. With them dead, the "movie" is over. Everyone looks at him like he's crazy, what with his "this is not real life" nonsense. To prove that it's not real, Lord Chadwick has one of the other officers shoot him repeatedly, which does not hurt him at all. He then tells them to wake up the housekeeper, since she's not really dead, just acting. When they tell him they obviously can't wake her up, Dr. Goggles informs him that one of the spectators is still alive, so the "movie" must keep going. Quite disappointed, Lord Chadwick resumes where he left off, interviewing the motel owner about the housekeeper. Rubby then pops the motel owner's head and runs off.

There should probably be some kind of spoiler alert below, but really, its a "horror" film. If you can't guess what's going to happen, you need to watch more horror movies.

3 days later, after a murderous spree that has left dozens of headless bodies in his wake, Rubby is finally found by police. A plan is hatched to use an explosives-rigged mannequin (who I'm going to call TNTina) to take him out. Mrs. Pilkington is brought in to provide the voice for the TNTina. As Mrs. Pilkington and Lord Chadwick are fighting back and forth to try and get Rubby to detonate TNTina, Wheels interrupts them to ask them why they don't hurry things along, and perhaps go with a different method of disposing of Rubby, such as a well placed bazooka shot. Apparently, Wheels is supposed to be either an armchair director or just director in general who's here to provide a better way to make the "movie." When TNTina's head gets popped and she doesn't explode, Lord Chadwick takes matters into his own hands and kills Rubby with a shotgun, depositing him at Wheels' feet. Wheels, upset that the "movie" can't end this way, sees a tricycle emerge from the trailer where Rubby had been. Rubby, as Wheels points out, has been reincarnated as a tricycle, which I guess makes him Tubby now. Wheels ends up being Tubby's first victim. Tubby then drives off down the road, collecting other tires in his wake. 

So now that you're sitting here wondering what the fuck you just read, you can rest assured you're feeling about the same thing as the folks that bailed after the intro and watched the movie. For a movie that prides itself as dedicated to "No Reason" and events occurring for "No Reason" in films, that's pretty much what it leaves you with in respect to why you should watch it: No Reason. The movie isn't bad, it's not some no-budget handy-cam filmed crapfest. It's just pointless. I will say the exploding heads are pretty impressive, since most of them looked to be non-CG special effects. So basically, if you plan on watching this movie, go into it with zero expectation, otherwise you'll probably be quite disappointed. And if the movie somehow meets your expectations, you might need to seek professional help.

Final results:

From My Playlist
	Artist:	Yoshida Brothers
	Song:	Kodo (Inside The Sun Remix)
	Album:	Best of Yoshida Brothers