Not to Quibble But...

While I've said some nasty things about "Attack of the Clones", it is also not, as Matt Yglesias suggests, the worst depiction of romance in the history of cinema. There are fates still worse, and, nice fellow that I am, I will list them for you.

1. "Eegah": How do you describe the love triangle consisting of a 30-year-old teen aged woman, a butt-ugly teen ager who thinks its charming to sing songs about other women to his girlfriend, and the gigantic man who would someday menace Roger Moore in "The Spy Who Loved Me"? Yes, it's Eegah. Richard Kiel plays the title role of the only caveman in Palm Springs. Kiel falls in love with a woman he meets after a near-collision on the highway. (A wonderous meet-cute) He later kidnaps her and her father, leaving their rescue up to the fugly Fabian wanna-be (MST3K called him a "cabbage-patch Elvis") and his dune buggy. Watch out for snakes.

Ickiest moments: Every closeup of Arch Hall Jr. in this movie qualifies, but the worst ones arrive when Eegah tries to involve the 30-year-old teenaged woman in the primitive rituals of mating (a.k.a. "Shtemlo") in front of her cowardly, ineffectual father. (Oh, and don't get me started on the shaving scene. Eeewww.)

2. "Outlaw of Gor": Bringing us funny hats and lots of butts, "Outlaw" is the story of Tarl Cabot, who occasionally likes to take a sabbatical in another dimension where large breasted women wear next-to-nothing. (How this is easier than a flight to Rio is beyond me.) Strangely, he takes with him on his journey his professional-third-wheel buddy, Watley Smith, who redefines anti-charisma on screen. The two of them get caught up in the political machinations of the King of Ko-ro-ban's trophy wife and wind up wandering around the Italian--oops--alien desert for a while until they're captured and almost executed. What saves them? One of the trophy wife's minions inexplicably changes his mind and kills her, freeing the citizenry to once again wander around saying "Cabot. Cabot. Cabot? Cabot! Cabot. Cabot! Cabot. Cabot! Cabot?"

Ickiest moments: Tarl Cabot's kissing methods make one rethink the whole idea of the French kiss, but far worse is when the trophy wife seduces an oiled-up Watley Smith. "How do they make love on your planet? Is it very different from ours?" I will say this, though. That scene does demonstrate just how badly the trophy wife wants power.

3. "Yor! The Hunter From the Future". No, I'm not. You can tell who will get together in this movie. Just watch for the primitive people with suspiciously good hair. Yor is one of those people. Kaa-laa is another. They travel together until they meet a third good-haired woman. Then we see Kaa-laa and Goodhair #3 fight over who gets Yor. Goodhair #3 is eventually killed by some hairy guys who say "Rworr" a lot, after which Kaa-laa feels bad for her. They eventually end up in a futurisitic city where they need Yor's seed for some reason. He fights against the seed harvesters and wins.

Ickiest moments: I think the villain in the piece wanted Yor to mate with his robots, or something like that. I wonder where you'd put that on a purity test. Anyway, the rest of the movie is more dippy than icky, especially the endless girl fighting over this guy with the oily chest and shiny tresses. It's so distracting to hear someone say "I love Yor!" You can't help saying back to the screen "You love my what?"

4. "Pearl Harbor" Easily the dumbest romantic triangle in the history of dumb romantic triangle. Two guys, one nurse, Michael Bay, and a plot that wraps dull couplings around a historic disaster. (When has that happened in movies before?) Three and a half hours. Evil.

Ickiest/dumbest moments: The sex scene among the parachutes was pretty stupid, as was the meet-cute during the physical exams. Worse is the whole missing-and-presumed-dead soap opera plot about Ben Affleck that leads the girl to fall into the arms of Josh "I'm going to die because my name is below the title" Hartnett. Ben Affleck is, of course, not dead. He was merely shot down over France. While Hartnett and the girl get cozy among the silk (and take Army Air Corps planes for joyrides at sunset. My father wants his taxes back for that one.), Ben escapes to England. Does Ben send a letter or a telegram to his former honey saying "AM ALIVE STOP COMING TO SEE YOU IN HAWAII STOP IF YOU'RE BOFFING MY BEST FRIEND STEVE STOP" Of course he dosn't, because we have to have lots of contrived scenes where they get into bar fights ("Not the Face!") and have boring arguments before the Japanese show up to bomb their romance. It's the movie that forces on us the awesome question: two thousand people died in Pearl Harbor, why couldn't these characters be among them?

5. "The Starfighters" One of "B-1" Bob Dornan's contributions to cinema, this Will Zens epic involves chaste romances, landing planes, taking off in planes, refueling plans, bombing lots of little white rectangles, and floating around in "poopie suits".

Ickiest/dumbest moments: Have you ever been on a date that invovled an in-depth explanation of corn detasseling? Well, now you have! You've also witnessed a double makeout party involving a married couple, and seen a man with the world's worst case of back sweat.

I could go on, but I have real work to do. Suffice it to say that, lame as the dialog in "Attack of the Clones" was, it wasn't the worst depiction of romance in cinema history. Not even close.