MonoTRONous

You know those really cool car ads? The ones with the thumping techno music, sleek, speeding vehicles and swirling lights? They are the coolest 30 seconds of your day -- an implant of buysexybuy that makes your pulse race. Who wouldn't want to extend that feeling to a feature film length?

The problem, of course, is that a feature film requires stuff like plot, dialogue and interesting characters to sustain the buzz. And even if you manage to come up with enough of those things, some buzzes still can't be sustained. (Also, if your constant state of being is altered, how are you ever really "high"?)

I never saw the original Tron, which came out when I was in college. I know I wasn't alone in skipping it, although clearly it has influenced many films since. They don't, however, tend to be films that interest me. I'm not a player of what we used to call videogames, and I'm more of a fan of actual, rather than virtual, reality.

Last night I had to screen Tron: Legacy, a new 3D offering from Disney.

It's meant to be a sequel, wherein the son of the Jeff Bridges character (Kevin Flynn) in the original somehow follows him down the digital rabbit hole he vanished into some 20 years earlier. Not-so-young Sam Flynn, played by someone named Owen Best (who is clearly a devotee of the constipated smirk school of acting that gave us Hayden Christiansen) finds himself in some gridworld that is led by a fascist avatar named Clu, who was created by his father and who bears a deathmask version of Jeff Bridges' younger face. (And yes, Clu, your digital jumpsuit with the iradescent orange piping does make your ass look lumpy.)

As a new denizen of gridworld, Sam is obliged to reenact some scenarios from the Thunderdome Road Warrior, the Death Race remake (the one where they took the satire out) and other sundry dystopian action films (all the while, keeping the action to PG, if you please). There are sticks that turn into motorcycles, giant NuvaRings that everyone has to wear on their backs and use as detachable weapons and other assorted magical crapola.

Sam is rescued from the Thunderdome by some girl in an asymmetrical haircut who whisks him off to see his dad, now living on the outskirts of wherever in some space that resembles dying Dave's dream room from 2001: A Space Odyssey, now with Asian floor throw pillows.

Dear old actual Jeff Bridges now spouts zen and sports a kimono, with occasional dabs of The Dude thrown in. There's some sort of complication as to why dad couldn't return home (a portal that closes? maybe its meant to be a vagina -- non-phallic symbolism? Ha!) Asymmetrical Hairdo takes Sam to some weird club with thumping music in downtown Grid City that's run by an albino version of David Bowie, circa Aladdin Sane (Michael Sheen, the only one having -- or giving -- any fun in the whole film).

Various yawn-inducing complications arise -- naturally Clu wants to break free of gridworld (just like Russell Crowe did in Virtuosity) -- but Sam & Asymmetrical Hairdo manage to return to the anonymous city he lives in where they are going to "change the world." I'd be satisfied if he could change his facial expression -- start small, dude.

I can't speak to the quality of the 3D, as I took the glasses off. (I hate 3D: good movies don't need it and it won't redeem a bad script.) The audience coming out of the midnight shows seemed to really have enjoyed it, so, good for them.

But I found Tron: Legacy uninvolving on any level. I was expecting it to at least have some cool visuals -- especially when I saw a short clip of some early footage over a year ago -- but I think it comes back to my analogy at the start: brief moments of visual splendor shine in commercials but quickly become monotonous when the same tricks are used repeatedly in a feature film. (It reminds me of how keen I was to see Moulin Rouge when the trailer came out, but how turned off I was when I saw that the film itself was edited in the same epilepsy-inducing style as the trailer.) 

I didn't see a single image in Tron: Legacy that could hold a candle to Inception, not to mention the novelty and creativity of telling an original story, rather than jump-starting a merchandise franchise (not that Christopher Nolan doesn't scratch that itch when he's Batmanning.).

If you like movies in this genre, by all means queue up and fork it over for Tron: Legacy. If these types of films don't appeal to you, this one will not make you change your mind.