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Gung Ho

(1986)

Remember back in the 1980s when everyone was afraid that the Japanese were going to buy America just because they were really good at making Walkmans? And then their whole economy collapsed because it turned out it was entirely based on junk bonds or something? Ha ha! Duh. Anyway, this movie came out back then and I suppose you could be all pretentious and say that it's a product of its time and zeitgeist and camera obscura and all that shit, but basically you can sum it up as "nips vs. rednecks". It's a lot like that episode of The Simpsons where the Japanese bought the power plant, except that episode of The Simpsons was actually funny. It starts when these nips buy a car factory in some flyover state. They want the people there to work hard and be efficient and shit, but unfortunately for them these are your typical union slackasses who want to make 89 dollars an hour, get sixteen breaks a day (plus an hour for lunch), and be as fat & lazy as humanly possible without actually lapsing into a coma. Finally the main guy (it's the dude from Mr. Mom- he's such a jerkoff) bets that Americans can make more cars in one month than the Japanese, and all the blue-collar fucks are totally behind him until they find out that they'll actually have to do some work, which if you've ever met someone in a union you know is like their kryptonite. Mr. Mom gives them this big speech and manages to talk them into it though, and after the usual fucking around they're like down to the wire and it's a race against time, by which I mean they show a bunch of people building cars while pop music plays. Wow- I never saw that coming. Christ, you could drop a Speak & Spell down the stairs and it would come up with a better story than this. The only good part is when Norm from Cheers gets his ass handed to him at the grocery store. How's that fist taste, Mr. Peterson, you fat fuck?