Gymkata
Look. I respect gymnasts. I really do. Any sport that requires you to be flexible and beautiful and yet also requires you to be strong enough that your muscles threaten to pull your skeleton apart deserves respect, if not horror. But I’m not responsible for Gymkata. I have to imagine that anything I can possibly say about the sport pales in comparison to the damage this movie’s done.
Here’s the basic idea: Gymnastics expert Johnathon Cabot (played by World Champion gymnast Kurt Thomas, who looks like Christopher Robin with a mullet) is recruited by the United States government to travel to a backwater Eastern European nation called Doofania (note too self: look up real name) to compete in a deadly athletic competition called “The Game.” This “The Game” is not to be confused with Queen’s Game of Love:
Nor should it be confused with that other “The Game” the gangsters are always talking about:
No, this “The Game” is a deadly gauntlet of a race. Losers die, the winner’s nation gets the right to build a satellite sub-station in the country. Or open a Subway franchise. Something like that, starts with an ‘S.’ Anyway, it’s not important.
What is important is that Cabot gets to beat people up by jumping, leaping, and using conveniently placed urban-environment gymnastics equipment like this pommel horse:
In the process he reunites with his long lost Dad, falls in love with the beautiful (apparently adopted) daughter of the Emperor Premier of Doofania, and learns how to climb stairs while doing a headstand. I suppose we’re supposed to think gymnastics is a tough, serious sport. And I used to think that until I watched Kurt Thomas flirt-by-backflip strategy.
Gymkata has to be one of the stupidest movies of all time and you owe it to yourself not to watch it.