Hi everyone (i'm not dead!), anyway... I'm not sure if anyone else has been misfortunate enough to watch it but I was dragged along to see Rush Hour 3 last night. Now, I realise that highlighting things in Rush Hour that aren't funny would be a very long and boring process, but one thing stood out for me.... A scene (which presumably was meant to be funny) where the american cop holds a gun to an innocent french taxi driver's head and forces him to sing the United States national anthem. I actually found it very disturbing and was wondering if it was just me...?
Ok, I should have mentioned it, I forgot because there almost was no context!.... Cop gets into a taxi. Taxi driver says he doesn't want to drive an American because he disagrees with their politics (he's against the war in Iraq basically). Cop pulls out his gun, puts it to the taxi drivers head, forces him to say he loves America and then dictates the words of the national anthem for him to sing back to him.
yeah, see... they actually changed "french fries" to "freedom fries" on the menus in the US Capitol when france opposed the war. the current US government is less mature than the kids who used to pick on you in third grade. if you haven't seen the latest Die Hard film yet, the super duper badguy hitmen squads are all french.
Oh, I remember Freedom Fries. I was fourteen when I heard about it, a few months before I joined the board, and it caused my first real feeling of political indignation. Fun times.
wow that sounds hilariouse. I know that'd have me in stitches. i can't stand those kinds of movies. theres almost no comedies that i can bare to watch anymore. Its all cheap teenage humor and overdone jokes. Anyway yes that is disturbing. kinda makes you wonder what kindof psycho writes that kinda thing.
I actually quite liked the first Rush Hour. I think I might have seen the second one too, but I don't remember anything about it.
last good comedy film i saw: Garden State written directed and starring Zach Braff of the mighty Scrubs... last generic comedy i saw: Shrek 3
I loved that freedom fries business. If I remember right, as a mark of protest, french restaurants stopped selling american products like pepsi, coca-cola and americans responded by renaming french fries. Oh joy.
Nope, the French didn't change a thing, it's not as if they make much money out of coke here in restaurants, it's the wine that's the main drink. Maybe some people stopped goind to MacDonalds, but nothing major apart mass hilarity at how silly the Americans can be. And the Americans just forgot about the Freedom Fries when the war started getting less and less popular. And there I was wondering why Rush Hour 3 wasn't very successful in France... I was just assuming it was the same pile of crap the first 2 were.
The French took against Coca Cola after the Second World War because they feared the influx of American culture. I've seen a wonderful cartoon from the period showing the French Prime Minister (or possibly President) - who had a reputation for philadering (don't they all?!) - in bed with his mistress, who was in the form of a bottle of coke, being discovered by his wine-bottle wife! But anyway nothing official came of it. And I've never heardof any food and drink-related protests in France about the Iraq War.
The whole Freedom Fries fiasco was hilarious. Talk about immature. You don't agree with us so we're gonna change the name of our fries! The French should have taken back the Statue of Liberty until they were good little boys again!!
