Picture the scene: it's the year 2000, I'm on a lads holiday in Magaluf, it's an obviously classy affair. My plucky friends and I decide to venture to a nightclub hosting a 'foam' party. For those who don't know, foam parties were very popular affairs in the late 90s in which the club vendor would pump bath foam onto the dance floor. Kids would get mega excited that they were in some sort of distorted Johnsons bubble bath advert: girls' t-shirts would become saturated; white foam-bearded lads would cheer at the sight of near-visible breasts; groping ensued from both sets of parties, and 'superstar' DJs performed the soundtrack to a life floating in simplicity. So, there I was, in the club, buoyed by a bellyful of cheap sangria, excited by the silliness of foam being pumped out onto the dance floor. Ankle height was fun; waist height was new and exciting; above head height was just plain scary. Due to my inability to breathe or see, I wasn't a huge fan. Panic set in, and after some rummaging around, I managed to escape to the sidelines, where I celebrated by vomiting all over a girl's shoe. As I collected myself and wiped the pain and suffering from my face, I observed the big ball of foam death: why wasn't there mass panic? Were people actually enjoying not being able to breathe and see? I was a lone, sane voice in a world where people either enjoyed choking to death, or were too weak to stand up and say: "Hey. This is shit!" It was an epiphany that I would take into adulthood. Fast forward to the year 2015: I'm choking all over again. But this time a foam party has been replaced by the new Star Wars movie.
'Brilliant'; 'Amazeballs'; 'Fantabulous'; and 'Ball-suckingly ace'. Normally I'm apprehensive when it comes to watching blockbuster movies. I mean, normally they're just shite. But with such definitive and well thought-out reviews, how could I not take myself along to the feeding frenzy that is the cinema? Surely fully-fledged adults couldn't be susceptible to the foam-based hype that engulfed us all as teenagers. So I went and I watched; safe in the knowledge that everyone thought it was 'Well good'. When the film ended, I managed to wade my way through the carcasses of popcorn buckets to the world outside. I was left confused. I even allowed myself to stand with one hand on my hip, the other on my chin. I let the film images wash through my brain. Then it dawned on me; I must have seen a different film.
The film I saw was a Star Wars parody. It was a very clever reunion special: like what you get on David Letterman. All the old stars were in it - Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones - and they even reprised the exact original plot where they had to blow up a Death Star in the exact same way. The only sad thing being that Darth Vader wasn't involved. Instead they had a hipster teenager who had won a competition to play the 'bad guy': apparently he was Darth Vader's biggest fan. Trouble was, he wasn't that scary and was quite prone to tantrums. But, having said that, they still had all the old jokes from the original film that they kept churning round, and even had a really funny new joke with which they got a girl with absolutely no acting ability whatsoever to play the new female lead. It was almost as funny as the host of English actors they got to play the evil military characters. They were told to over-act to such a degree that their veins were busting out of their heads; a great accompaniment to the overall bad leader whom they had enlisted Lord of the Ring's Gollum to play. It was great seeing him again. The CGI really made it look cheap and unbelievable, which is ideal for a comedy parody.
So, I recommend you get to see this very entertaining Star Wars parody. It's called Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Which strangely enough is the same name as the new Star Wars film that everyone says is the 'Dog's nuts' - strange bit of marketing if you ask me. At one point I was concerned that they were the same film and I had actually seen the new Star Wars. Imagine that? If that comedy parody film was actually the new Star Wars film. I mean; that would be awful. That would mean Disney had just made a bad remake of an otherwise awesome film in order to clean up on merchandise and empty the pockets of the fans. It's a scary notion to think that countless people had seen this film and been swept away on the fraudulent hype fired from its massive laser cannon; oblivious to the irony that they are watching a film about a rebellion against an evil empire, all the while subscribing to a Hype Machine which is way scarier and devastating than any Death Star, no matter how 'mega'. Such thoughts throw me back to that nightclub again: everyone covered in foam, choking to death, telling me I should be enjoying myself; that I should be ingesting the foamy shit being pumped out at me from above. But, as Luke the Walker of the Sky once said: I'll never join you.