Time Mag Movie Review: G.W.Bush and Rick Perry Just Like Blood Thirsty Conan The Barbarian

by: warner todd huston | published: 08 23, 2011

Did you know that Texas Governor Rick Perry and President George W. Bush are just like the fictional, prehistoric, sword-wielding, mass murderer, Conan the Barbarian? Well Time Magazine entertainment reporter Richard Corliss is here to inform you all about it in his review of the new action movie released this week based on the Robert E. Howard character. What is it with these people that they have to bring their hatred for Republicans into their reviews about films that have nothing whatever to do with politics?

It is clear that Corliss is not a fan of this flick, for sure. And he mixes metaphors and abuses sayings to beat the band to show his disdain. But it is his second, non-sequitur-filled paragraph that goes for Perry's and W's throats. Corliss features this attack prominently in the second paragraph of the review so that no one will miss it.

Corliss describes how at the beginning of the movie a young Conan watches his entire family slaughtered in front of him. To Corliss, this seems somehow "kind of like" the way Saddam Hussein plotted to kill George W. Bush's father, H.W. Bush.

As a boy (played by Leo Howard), he watches in horror while the ruthless warlord Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang) humiliates and murders Conan's father (Ron Perlman); it's kind of like Saddam Hussein's plot to assassinate George H.W. Bush, which supposedly led son W. to invade Iraq and chase down Saddam. Conan, though, grows up to be less like 43, the smiling tiger, and more like current Texas governor Rick Perry, with a compulsive appetite for red-meat rivalries. This barbarian has compiled an endless list of enemies and vows, as Perry did with Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, to make life pretty ugly for all of them.

Uh, sorry, Richie, it is not "kind of like" anything of the kind. In fact, it is just a left-wing trope that W. Bush invaded Iraq because he was trying to get even with Saddam for plotting to kill his daddy. There is no evidence at all of this nonsensical claim. W laid out his reasons for going into Iraq pretty clearly through his discussions with the U.N. and the presentation that he had Secretary Colin Powell give. Revenge was no where in the mix.

Secondly, Governor Rick Perry did not "vow" to do anything to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. He may have issued a veiled slap at Bernanke as exhibiting un-American behavior, behavior that wouldn't be looked on kindly by Texans, but he made no "vow" to do anything physical to Obama’s disastrous Fed Chairman.

But, what is this doing in a movie review, anyway? Conan the Barbarian has nothing whatever to do with politics. In fact, it is a storyline from so far back into pre-history that democracy and politics had yet to even become the sort of concepts that put a glimmer in mankind's eye!

So, why is this non-sequitur paragraph added to the movie review? Why else but to show disdain for Republicans. Corliss is like a guy with Tourette's syndrome, screaming out inappropriate things always at the wrong time. But he doesn't have a disease to excuse his foolishness, unless you are one of those that believe leftism a mental disease.

Now, we might recall Richard Corliss was one of those that cried a river when the extremist, left-wing radio network Air America finally went down to utter defeat in the face of conservative talk radio. (Air America Will Be Missed, Time Magazine Jan 21, 2010)

As I said, Corliss' review employed some pretty tortured metaphors and comparisons. In one strange line Corliss said that one of the antagonists in the film was the "king of the ugly prom," what ever that is supposed to mean. Maybe Corliss thinks Conan went on his rampages because he never got a date for the prom?

Another badly penned line follows a segment where Corliss describes the blood of innocent women as being the "nectar" of the film's mean girl character played by Rose McGowan. Corliss followed that with, "And bloodshed is this Conan's plasma." Blood basically IS plasma… isn't it? So how does this phrase apparently meant as a clever juxtaposition work? It's like saying "And bloodshed is this Conan's bloodshed." Worse he started his paragraph with the word "and," generally thought to be a literary faux pas.

One odd attempt at levity has, "Zym cracking one rival's skull into crimson pulp, like an Easter egg with the red dye on the inside." Who goes about smashing their Easter eggs to a bloody "pulp"? That would be one crazy Easter morning.

Further, Conan, "uses his sword to give a warrior from an enemy clan an instant nose job -- he cuts off the man's nose to spite his race…" We all know the old saw of cutting one's nose off to spite one's face, but isn't that something one does to one's own self? Doing it to someone else is just mayhem! And if this was a racial thing in the movie, Corliss didn’t fill in his reader to that little bit of important info to make his quip make sense.

Anyway, a literary giant Corliss does not seem to be. But did he give a sensible review to the movie? Well, he was snide, dismissive and silly in his tone, so it is obvious he didn't take the film very seriously – and maybe rightfully so as the thing seems to be bombing at the box office. That is no crime against journalism, to be sure. But one gets the feeling that he only reviewed the movie to unleash his badly formed puns and as an excuse to attack Republicans. The ulterior motive makes his “review” seem somewhat empty.

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