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Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Thomas and the Magic Railroad

The title of this blog might lead you to believe that I have spent the last several days doing mushrooms in my backyard, but it is not a clever "Puff the Magic Dragon" or "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" kind of reference. I actually want to talk about the movie "Thomas and the Magic Railroad".

For those of you who do not have children and have never experienced the utter agony of Thomas the Tank Engine and his Friends, let me bring you up to speed: weird stop-motion world located on a small British isle inhabited by talking heavy equipment with horrendous personality flaws. Bad scripts, simpering vocal work, inexcusable songwriting, but the occasional turn by George Carlin as the narrator. So I'm not a fan. There are plenty of good children's shows out there, this just isn't one of them. All this without even mentioning the oppressive industry of Thomas and his Friends toys, the complete line of which would cost a parent about $600K.

A few years ago, the clever people already making money off of Thomas toys decided to afflict us with a Thomas movie. It is called "Thomas and the Magic Railroad" and although it has been floating around our house for a while, I never had the chance to see it until this weekend.

"Thomas and the Magic Railroad" is the worst f*&%ing movie ever made. Ever. It is worse than "Plan 9 from Outer Space", worse than "Ishtar", worse than "The Conquerer" (with John Wayne as Genghis Khan), worse than "Santa Claus vs. the Martians". This movie is so bad that Alec Baldwin tries to save it.

The movie is so bad that I cannot tell you what the premise is. It has something to do with evil diesel train engines, the succession of magical conductors, a world crisis short supply of fairy dust and the redemption of a surly, creepy, possibly drug-addled hermit (played by, I am not making this up, Peter Fonda). It all somehow hinges on a magic train engine named Lady that Peter Fonda abused somehow at some point and then decided to lock in a cave for eternity in order to atone. I know this sounds bad, but it's actually worse.

My eldest son had a book based on the movie when he was about three, and it was the worst f*&%ing book ever written (for those of you who want to go buy it to make sure, I believe it is called "Diesel 10 Means Trouble"). It was so bad that after three days of reading it, it met with a horrible accident. Somewhere right now, this book and Chomper the Talking Crane (with whom my two year-old son used to argue) are hanging out together.

Anyway, the movie is so fantastically bad that I think everyone should see it. Much as children's movies get short shrift when they are truly great (for an example, see "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit"), this one will never get credit for how bad it is. And that's a shame.

So if you have one of those mushroom weekends ('cause I know some of you are into that sort of thing), rent "Thomas and the Magic Railroad" in a double-feature with "Plan 9 from Outer Space". Thomas is worse or I will personally refund your money. At least for Thomas - Plan 9 was your own dumbass fault.

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