THE NET

[garote]

Matt: We should do a watch party some night. How about ... THE NET?

Me: Gruh, that was 1995?

(Rummaging around in digital archives.)

Me: Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen. The movie starts at 10pm. Let's go.

(0:00 in.)

Matt: Here comes the MIDI brass!
Me: Ooo! Intriguing music for such an awful movie.

(0:05 in.)

Me: Faaake! MacOS did not use "/" as a folder separator! My disbelief is throughly de-suspended.
Matt: Oh believe me, that won't be the least accurate thing in this movie.
Me: Oh yeaaah the online pizza order...
Matt: Fun fact, Sandra Bullock really was one of the earliest proponents of Internet food ordering.
Me: That was like, already a combination of really cool and really wanky, even then. Also: No one eats like that, and looks like her.

(0:15 in.)

Matt: Oh look, a small aircraft at a critical plot point, I wonder what will happen.
Me: Yeah there's no reason we'd be seeing this unless...

(KABOOOOM)

Me: Yeah there it is.
Matt: That wasn't the tower he was supposed to contact. And also that's not what we meant by contact.

(0:20 in. Sandra is on the beach, with a laptop. An older guy is nearby, also on a laptop.)

Me: This guy is a villain, right?
Matt: WHAT GAVE IT AWAY
Me: The hair.

(0:25 in.)

Me: Okay, so, uh, DOES THIS MOVIE ACTUALLY HAVE A PLOT? We're almost 25 minutes in, and so far it does not.
Matt: Maybe it's one of the special features on the DVD.

(0:29 in.)

Me: At what point does she use her super hax0r skills to not get murdered at sea?
Matt: Well... I think she plays snake on her phone with a hacked skill level to avoid getting bored out of her mind.
Me: Wait; he unloaded the gun and put it away below decks after killing that guy, but now he's going down to get it, even though the plan was to kill her the whole time?
Matt: Don't overthink it. He clearly didn't.

(0:31 in. Sandra and the creepy guy are making out.)

Me: Okay, NOW THEY'RE PLAYING "SNAKE". AM I RIGHT PEOPLE?
Matt: Looks more like Tetris to me.

(0:35 in. The camera is focusing on the villain's lips. They fill the screen as he talks.)

Me: Mr. Winkler made a dumb decision with those close-ups. That was like, "student project" directing.
Matt: Yeah, I think that editing was considered edgy for the '90s. But what it really looks like to me is somebody who mostly shot for TV.
Me: I'm enjoying the fact that I can google stuff about this movie while watching it. Me from 1995 would find that hilarious.

(0:49 in. Sandra is running from the law, and meets up with Dennis Miller.)

Matt: And there he is!
Me: You know, I kinda forgot, 1995 Sandra is not actually a very good actor. She has two modes: Slightly checked-out, or panicked motormouth.
Matt: Dialogue can be written for her, and she looks good on camera, but yeah, it's not the same thing.
Me: Dennis Miller isn't great either, but for a totally different reason. I mean, he's very natural, but that's because he's not acting. He's just being Dennis Miller.

(0:53 in.)

Me: Tell me Dennis ad-libbed that toilet line.
Matt: I feel like he either did it as a formal rewrite or ad-libbed it, yeah. Because that clearly didn't come out of the rest of these writers.
Me: AGREED. So, is he gonna get killed in like 35 seconds?

(1:00 in.)

Me: Awwww, they had to actually spell out IRL!
Matt: "You know what would help, Sandra, is if you just like read the screen out loud, because most people who go to see hacker movies can't actually read. Our focus group thinks this is what it will take."
Me: "Also, while you read it, we're going to film your lips moving. Right up close. Try not to think about it."

(1:02 in. Dennis has just been poisoned.)

Me: Okay it took longer than 35 seconds, but he is going to die, right?
Matt: I honestly can't remember.

(Sandra is using stolen hacking software to look something up in a hospital's medical records.)

Me: Hold on. You looked at a record on the internet, and used that as confirmation that the last record you saw on the internet was fake? Now that's just dumb.
Matt: IT WAS A SIMPLER TIME.

(1:07. Dennis is being poisoned again, but worse.)

Me: Awww Dennis. I knew you were gonna die as soon as you walked on-screen.

(1:15 in. Sandra has just yanked an old computer monitor off a desk. It shatters on the floor.)

Matt: Now I don't know about you, but I've dropped a few CRTs from a second floor, and those things don't shatter that easy.

(1:20 in. Sandra is being chased by cops for driving a stolen car.)

Me: Okay, so Sandra has like, 20 minutes to turn this all around. And so far she's done nothing but ask a couple of guys for help, and run from people. Now both the guys are dead and she's in jail. When are we going to see some h4x0r skills?

(1:25 in. Sandra has just crashed another car and is running from a fake FBI agent.)

Me: ... Okay now Sandra has less than 15 minutes to turn this all around.

(1:33 in. Sandra has finally decided to infiltrate the headquarters of the company pursuing her.)

Me: Cathedral, Inc! We do software security like gangbusters, but we don't lock our doors, and we don't have a front desk! No one has a badge, no one asks who you are, there are no security cameras, and we never log out of our machines when we leave!

(1:36 in. Columns of numbers are zipping around on the screen.)

Matt: Nice. A subnet octet greater than 255. I wonder if somebody was thinking that was like the "555-1212" of the internet.
Me: Yeah that was .... a whole lot of confusing.

(1:42 in.)

Matt: Oh here it is, here it is! The theme scene for the whole film! Wait fooor iiiiit...

(Sandra attempts to put a 3.5" disk into a drive but shoves it in upside down. It jams. She pulls it back out and turns it over.)

Matt: Ta daaa! Did you catch that?
Me: "That's the take we'll use!"

(1:46 in. Sandra has just restored her entire digital life by pressing one key.)

Matt: And there you go.
Me: It just ends?
Matt: What did you think?
Me: Well, to start, I'm glad I didn't watch that movie 30 years ago. Because honestly it's better as a horrendous time capsule, and by "better", what I mean is, less than completely intolerable.

(The credits are finally rolling.)

Me: "Adam Winkler" as "COMPUTER NERD". Hey, there are like 4 Winklers in this cast.
Matt: Yeah they got Winklered to hell.
Me: Very Winklery.