Justin's Rating: So THIS is what they learn in Feminist Theory classes!
Justin's Review: How does one discribe this movie? It's so unabashedly itself that you'll either be feeling hungover like the time you got tricked into seeing the Spice Girls flick, or (like me) you'll be doing a little chuckle dance, reveling in a truly one-of-a-kind movie.

"Make mine Jet Girl any day! Women who know how to get down and dirty with mechanical things are totally hot."

Tank Girl spanks you in the face from minute one to minute one hundred and four. Our spunky heroine (gleefully portrayed by Lori Petty) is part punkette, part ultra-liberated womynist, and mostly a comic book character in the flesh. Which is what Tank Girl is based on... there's even still images and animated clips that spice up various scenes. It's definitely one bizarre way to make a film, but I've seen worse comic-to-screen translations flail and die (anyone see Spawn?).

In the future, a comet has hit the planet and as a result there's little water and a lot of kangaroo creatures starring Ice-T (aka "I named myself after a rather weak form of refreshing beverage, as that befits my status as a rapper"). What? Hey, you don't get out to the zoo enough. Tank Girl fights the evil Water & Power, headed up by Malcom McDowell, and spouts off more one-liners than Arnold on a good day. Action, tanks, jets, machine guns, and approximately 521 costume changes later, TG has us convinced she's marriage material (and she saves the day as well, I think). There's not just a bit of special effects, Freudian symbols, and a cute sidekick named Jet Girl (Naomi Watts) that all serve to feed the soul as well. Wait, did I say Tank Girl was marriage material? Naw, make mine Jet Girl any day! Women who know how to get down and dirty with mechanical things are totally hot.

I guess what's so fun about Tank Girl is that the film, like the lead character, is nothing more than a grown-up child at play. We like tanks. They make things go boom. See Tank Girl, or we might have to shave your head.

Alex's Rating: If only the coming appocalypse turns out to be this much fun…
Alex's Review: So, back in the days of yore when I was but a whisp of a girl at the tender age of 16 and dating aspiring comic book artists in Minnesota via the internet, I was first introduced to this cult gem. Not to insinuate that rural Minnesota isn’t one of the most exciting epicenters of art and culture in the world, but Tank Girl is by far the longest-lived influence I took from loverboy and his snowy surroundings. Okay, that, and a deeply seated revulsion for the word “Sodapop”. But let’s move on.

"I’d prefer to stick my face in a blender running on pureé for the exfoliation benefits rather than sit through additional viewings of said masterpieces"

In the years since the trauma of my brief northern exposure finally shuffled to the back of my mental library, Tank Girl has remained a favorite, and earned shelf space in both mine and my sister’s video and DVD arsenal. TG has become our common movie middle ground since we first watched it together while sharing a bucket of Haagen Daas Belgian Chocolate ice cream. Considering that sister dearest ceaselessly enjoys such cinematic masterpieces as Gossip, End of Days, or the sundry Wayans Brothers production while I’d prefer to stick my face in a blender running on pureé for the exfoliation benefits rather than sit through additional viewings of said masterpieces, that’s saying a lot.

My Inner Wackiness overrides my more peevish highbrow Quality Control, and so for the hour and three quarters that the movie lasts, my favorite youngest sibling and I romp together in the highly hilarious quote-laden bliss that is Tank Girl. Thus there is a measure of peace in the kingdom, and we’ve got Lori Petty and Malcom McDowell to thank for it.

Apart from spanning the gap between two opposite-ends-of-the-spectrum-sitters like myself and my sister, TG genuinely is a rich source of good fun. Notice the lack of the word “clean” in there; it’s absence is warranted, since most of the dialogue in the movie is not exactly suited to those who are virginal of ear. Still, being the mature omnipotent geek goddess that I am acclaimed to be (by stalkers and boyfriend alike, wow, can ya feel the love?), I can pretty much assure you it’s nothing that’s going to put a twist in your bloomers, especially if you’ve managed to sit through anything akin to The Boondock Saints, or Chairman of the Board (where it was indubitably the audience who made ample use of the more severe variety of vocabulary).

The characters are all stylish cartoon caricatures portrayed perfectly in line with the mood of the original cult British comic, which yields a level of entertainment to be wished for with every comic book film adaptation. My favorite character has to be Jeta, with her transformation from being the painfully shy science geekette to full-force card carrying sidekick worthy of our heroine and her crazy antics. She’s really got some of the coolest lines in the movie, and when she finally gets revenge against the scuzzy Travolta lookalike bully, it is indeed sweet. Plus, I would so take a jet over a tank. Definitely.

Complete with a Cole Porter song and dance number, Ice-T looking somehow appropriate as a kangaroo manimal, and an amusingly believable cameo by Iggy Pop as a post-appocalyptic brothel visiting pervert, Tank Girl straps on a missile brassiere and fires away with enough laughs to cure hangovers, lower taxes, and incite world peace. Well, at the very least, you’ll be treated to the word “hump” no less than twice -- and that’s always good for a giggle!

"Is this a dagger I see before me?"

Didja Notice? [some sources: IMDb]

• Sub Girl, or “Rain Lady” as she’s referred to in the movie is played by Ann Cusack, another one of the seemingly endless family of Hollywood-employed Cusacks.
• Both TG and Booger wear a bull's-eye T-shirt
• Laz-y-boys on tanks. If the Army did this, there might be more recruits.
• The Titanic in San Fransisco bay?
• Immediately after Malcolm McDowell's first scene, Lori Petty's costume (bowler hat, eye makeup) recalls McDowell's costume in A Clockwork Orange
• Tank Girl wears 18 different outfits and hairstyles throughout the film

Is It Worth Staying Through End Credits?

We don't think so.

Intermission! [some sources: IMDb]

Emily Lloyd was originally cast in the title role, but turned it down after refusing to shave her head for the part.

Here's a list of the many scenes cut from this movie:

• Opening sequence where the comet crashes into the Earth and obliterates everything - lots of SpFx by the Skotaks . Little Rebecca in a trailer park, survives pathetically, like in Them!. Instead of all that lame-o voiceover which Lori and I hated at the beginning, there was a sequence at White Sands where an old lady sand hermit digs up a bottle of water, dances a little jig, then drinks it like in an orange juice commercial. then a Water and Power pilot finds she's taken water and brutally shoots her dead. He reclaims the water, but is attacked by a ripper. Tank Girl witnesses all this on her buffalo.
• Tank Girl goes home and gets stoned in her bedroom, where she goofs around with her dildo collection. She talks with Richard about how messed up the world is.
• For some reason, they made me butcher the scene in the cold chamber/cold prison, which had a lot more funny jokes, like when Tank Girl asks Kesslee for some juice and a croissant. He shoots her up with cholera, before taking her to the pipe.
• [This scene is described on the trading card in this way, obviously the cards were made before the final cuts.] There was an additional scene in the cold chamber where he offers her water and she spits it in his face, which motivates him putting her in the pipe.
• [Also described on the trading card] In Kesslee's office, they made me use the TV version of the line "If you wanna torture, spank me, ..." The real version was "f**k me" which got changed to "lick me". Go figure.
• The dance number had three additional lyrics one with Jet Girl singing, where she goes from being really shy to being really wild.
• One with little Sam singing, which was a great intro to the scene. She ends it by grabbing the guard's guns.
• And one with TG doing a real Sid Vicious type lyric to screaming dancer fans.
• The infamous scene with Rebecca and Booga in bed.
• [A picture of this appears in the Making of... book.] Sub Girl - in the original script, Sub Girl was this real mystical space-cadet friend of TG's, who said all these insane things all of which turned out to be prophetic and true. She always said she knew the Rippers, which no one believed, until TG gets desperate and asks her anyway. She also said it was gonna rain and she was building this arc to save everyone.
• When we fell behind in shooting, her character had to pick up some informational slack about where Sam was, which didn't really work for what I'd planned for her, so we ended up with that pretty awful scene in her place. But we also shot her building her arc, which turned out to be a sand-submarine. At the end of the movie, she plows through the sand and helps the girls defeat water and power and free the prisoners by blowing up W/P.
• [On the trading card Sub Girl is named Subrina and it says that she is building a submarine for when the rains come.]
• Then there was a tag where it rained and TG/Jet G/and Sub Girl plan to take over the world (the umbrella hat shot) (rather than the animation). Someone in the obnoxious focus group said they didn't understand why it rained. So out it went. We put in the animation, which I liked anyway, but first time we screened it with the animation, someone in the focus group said I wish it had rained at the end. Then everyone agreed. I hate test screenings, especially when the studio takes one person's opinion to be gospel.
• They made me add a lot of lame voiceover, which still makes me cringe. Like "You guys can't shoot" in the semi chase - which had a lot more gags with TG using her squirt gun and putting a condom on a banana before throwing it at the guard.
• And one of the stupidest line changes was in the MedBay, where now Kesslee says "You see the glass half empty, I prefer to see it half full" The original line was "Doctor, about those pain killers, maybe you should take them yourself" she says "I don't understand" and Sgt. Small shoves the saver (water-sucker) into her back.
• There were a few additional scenes with Sgt. Small where we had a really stupid running joke about him being soaked by the waterfall curtain in Kesslee's office.

Official and Not-So-Official Websites

• MGM Official Site
• Tank Girl Fan Site (check out their list of swear words -- alphabetical -- that they used in the film)

Groovy Quotes

Tank Girl: It's been swell, but the swelling's gone down.

Booga: I was a dog, but because I was really good, they moved me up to human being status. [Looks down his mutant body.] Ehh... sort of.

Tank Girl: Ladies, lock up your sons!

Tank Girl: You gotta think about it like the first time you got laid. You gotta go: "Daddy, are you sure this is right?"

Tank Girl: I'm gonna hit you so hard, your children will be born bruised!

Tank Girl: I have two words for you: Brush Your Teeth!

Jet Girl: This tank it-it-it-it-it isn't . . .
Tank Girl: Isn't? Isn't?
Jet Girl: Isn't . . .
Tank Girl: What?! Come on, just one little adjective and we'll have a whole sentence here. The tank isn't . . . glad? Sad? Mad? Lonely?
Jet Girl: It-it isn't operational.

Jet Girl: It’s a little something I put together – a voice stress modulation detection device. [baffled silence] It detects lies!
T-Saint: How much did Water & Power pay you to spy on us?!
Tank Girl: [on laughing gas] Two dollars and fifteen cents!

Tank Girl: Come on Jet. We gotta go get her. To the Bat Tank!

Tank Girl: Hey, what time is it? I don’t wanna miss Baywatch, or nothin’.
Work Camp Guard: Get back to work!

Tank Girl: This comet came crashing into the earth. BAM! Total devastation. No celebrities, no cable TV, *no water*! It hasn't rained in 11 years. Now, 20 people gotta squeeze into the same bathtub. So it ain't all bad.

Tank Girl: Look, if you want to torture me, spank me, lick me, do it. But if this poetry s**t continues just shoot me now please.

Soundtrack Review

This is a pretty good compilation to get ahold of, particularly for Devo's "Whip It" and Joan Jett's "Let's Do It". I think Courtney Love has a halfway-decent song on here, too.

If you liked this movie, try these:

• Repo Man
• SLC Punk
• Waterworld

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