WHEN I WAS THREE, I THOUGHT THE WORLD REVOLVED AROUND ME. I WAS WRONG.: So okay, I Netflix’d a bunch of movies, because… uh… Alan Rickman was in them. And he’s done a lot of random stuff. I mean, Sense and Sensibility was predictable but okay (once you tell me that one sister is played by Emma Thompson and one is played by Kate Winslet, I get that you want me to root for the former over the latter, thanks). But then the mailman brought me Quigley Down Under.

OMG. Okay, so… 1) Did you ever wonder why there are brown people in the world? This movie explains! It’s so that noble white people can defend them.

2) Did you ever wonder why there is Australia in the world? This movie explains! It’s so that America can be better than it.

[eta: OK, on reflection this point is not as clear-cut in the movie as point #1. I was swept away by parallel structure…. Oh, like it’s never happened to you.]

3) This was such a horrible, awful movie, I swear. Politically/philosophically wretched (I don’t think a single one of the aboriginal characters had a line of dialogue, including a character who must have been able to speak English; nor did any of them have interesting character arcs; nor did they have characters at all, really–they could have been dolphins and the story would have been the same), narratively cliched (somebody get me a copy of the Evil Overlord List–stat!), hideously mustached.

4) I still gave it two stars at Netflix, rather than one, pretty much solely because of Teh Rickman. He’s underused, but he does get to show off his hilarious teeth (I love the thing where he lifts just his top lip, in this evil tooth-baring grin) and occasionally gets to slink menacingly in the background. Other than that, this movie is evil. Like, “If God is all good and all powerful, why did this movie get made?” (…OK, Laura San Giacomo was probably about as good as she could have been, given the utter crapulence of her character. So, yay for her.)

I just hope AR got paid well for this tripe.