By: Daniel Minox
Tank Girl is the 1995 film adaptation of the British comic book of the same name. It’s a science fiction story set in 2033 in a future desecrated by a comet that destroyed the surface of the Earth and made it look like any generic mid-Western desert. Apparently, the comet was big enough to destroy most life, but left intact a few colonies-worth of people all fighting over essential resources, especially water, including the evil Mr. Kesslee, CEO of the company Water & Power—i.e. the corporatism of H20. The hero, of course, being Rebecca, aka Tank Girl, and her trusted side-kick, Jet Girl. Tank Girl’s weapon of choice is, as you might have guessed already, a tank, and Jet Girl’s is a jet.
It’s not the cleverest movie ever written. But it is entertaining. Starring Lori Petty and Naomi Watts, the film tells the story of how Tank Girl’s survival commune/family was brutally killed by Water & Power, which controls, or at least tries to, all of water (or what’s left of it). Tank Girl goes on a mission to both redeem herself—she was on guard the night Water & Power killed her commune—and to also free the fragment of the world still under the thumb of Water & Power tyranny.
Along the way, Tank Girl meets her partner in crime, Jet Girl, along with faithful and endearing soldiers whose genetic code was spliced with kangaroos. Tank Girl, Jet Girl, and a platoon of kangaroo men fighting against a water company. It just gets better and better. And if that basic description makes the film seem ridiculous, that’s only the half of it.
Throughout the film, the director chose, both boldly and rashly, montages of animation from the original comic book, animatronic prosthetics, holography, computerized special effects, and random song-and-dance performances that didn’t effectively blend with the plot. If was as if they pulled every 1995 film effect out of their Hollywood bag and just plopped it onto Tank Girl. At times, it makes the film, and its subsequent didactic message, seem cheap and trite, going for the spectacular rather than the substance. But, overall, it worked. For whatever reason, I believe it worked for Tank Girl.
The comic book is rather ridiculous and bizarre as well, and so the film just mirrored that imagery thinking that the readers of the comic book would enjoy the similar techniques used in the film, not realizing at times that film and comic book are two separate and entirely different mediums. That’s not to say they can’t tell the same story, but there’s a certain level of ridiculous that can be portrayed in a comic book that just doesn’t translate as well onto the silver screen.
While Tank Girl isn’t a film for everyone, it is enjoyable for those who like the bizarre and weird in life, mixed in with science fiction and punk allusions, along with an undertone of surrealism and subversive Dadaism. It’s not a clear-cut film that makes a whole lot of sense, but it will certainly intrigue you visual sensations to a different experience—whether you like it or not is dependent on…, well, who knows.
Ultimately, though, I believe Tank Girl will go down in history as being one of the most memorable films of Generation X. Perhaps not that many people realize this now, or even want to, but I believe in a distant future—if there is one—that they will latch onto Tank Girl as emblematic of what our culture was like, especially our youth culture, and how it represented a society afraid of nuclear holocaust, bent of controlling the production and flow of resources, and always wanting to be perfectly fashionable no matter the occasion. For those reasons, and a few more, I believe Tank Girl is more a historical film than anything else, though it is pretty damn funny as well.
Tank Girl,
Ruth
1 Mar 2012I have it on VHS…
Spikey
1 Mar 2012I loved that flick and I still listen to the soundtrack every once in a while.
Carl
1 Mar 2012Awesome!
Kathryn
1 Mar 2012It’s a blast!
John
1 Mar 2012Love love that movie. I had a VHS of it. Now it’s on my Netflix.
Jennifer
1 Mar 2012Are you kidding? I have a Tank Girl tat! lol
Jesse
1 Mar 2012Fantastic movie, cult classic
Todd
1 Mar 2012Of course!!! Own it and watch it over and over!! Have most the comics too.
Debi
1 Mar 2012I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sequoia
1 Mar 2012Jamie Hewlett did that comic, right?
Zarich
1 Mar 2012Ohmygod I love that film!
Jojo
1 Mar 2012I love Tank Girl!