Short Circuit is not a good movie. So whoever got the idea to combine it with Top Gun and hand the project over to Rob Cohen should have probably be beaten with a shovel until he stopped moving. Instead, they threw millions and millions of dollars at it and we got Stealth.

Tagline: Fear the Sky

More Accurate Tagline: Fear the Vagina

Guilty Party: Rob Cohen. There’s really no question here, especially after I learned that despite W.D. Richter getting the sole writing credit, Cohen seriously rewrote the script. This movie is undistilled Cohen, combining his trademark mechanophilia and his unabashed phobia of women into something so genuinely disturbing that it will be studied in film and psychology classes for decades. Or should be, at least. Cohen reminds me of General Ripper from Dr. Strangelove, not because this movie could be read as a seriously misguided remake attempt, but because Cohen does not shun women, though he does deny them his essence.

Synopsis: Three pilots, Gannon (Josh Lucas), Wade (Jessica Biel), and Purcell (Jamie Foxx, wishing he could take this one back) are the best there is. So when the military builds a new jet powered by an artificial intelligence, it’s only natural that Gannon, Wade, and Purcell integrate the jet, called EDI, into their squad. No one remarks that the jet looks exactly like a vagina. Because EDI is an AI, lightning strikes turn it evil. EDI ends up zooming all over the place bothering people and gets ready to nuke North Korea. Along the way, since Purcell is the black guy, he dies, and Wade has to bail out over North Korea and gets chased all over the place by North Koreans. Gannon finally talks EDI down, but the military is keen to cover everything up and attempts to kill Gannon. Instead, he hops into EDI and goes to rescue Wade. Since this is a movie, he kills a ton of Koreans, avoids an international incident and gets his girl. EDI dies. In the end, Wade and Gannon express their mutual desire to hit that. I guess Wade felt obligated after Gannon nearly started World War III for her, and Gannon had to wait for Purcell to die so it didn’t turn into a freaky three way.

Life-Changing Subtext: Vaginas are dangerous, self-aware things who want nothing more than to bring about the end of the world. Also, they have nuclear weapons. And just try to have disarmament talks with them.

Defining Quote: The movie is riddled with sexual single entendres, but my favorite is: “If you go down, Cummings wins.” Well, yeah.

Standout Performance: Jessica Biel’s butt was the most memorable cast member. I really think it needed a separate credit. I’m not saying it needs a stage name or anything – Pert O’Bubble might be a bit much – but it should be recognized. Not necessarily by the Academy, although I wouldn’t turn down a new category at the Oscars this year, but we need to know it’s there. The one part of the movie that let me down was that Cohen didn’t let O’Bubble show its true range. Sure, we saw it in a flight suit, we saw it in a bikini, but we didn’t know how it would handle emoting through a thong. I should probably stop now, because I’m officially no longer in the Trust Tree.

What’s Wrong: At this point, you’re probably wondering how much of the jet’s vaginality is my imagination. None of it. As luck would have it, we had someone on hand who actually worked on special effects of the film. In meetings, Cohen referred to the jet’s inner and outer labia and demanded that they look moister. Plus, the damn thing has a clitoris. I wish I were making this up.

Flash of Competence: The special effects are top notch, and I’m not just saying that, and Cohen is a solid director when it comes to action sequences. It’s when his characters are standing around talking that he runs into problems.

Best Jokes:

The special effects person explains to us that Josh Lucas’s eyes were digitally enhanced, making blue bluer.

Me: When you guys made Josh Lucas’s eyes blue, did you walk around the office saying "I blue Josh Lucas"?
Special Effects Person: No.
Me: I would have.

In the emotional finale:

Jessica Biel: When we were gonna detatch formation, you were gonna tell me something.
Clinton, replying for Josh Lucas: I’m pregnant.

Jessica Biel vs. the North Korean border:

Lauri: How does one person take out a whole border?
Me: She’s Jessica Biel!
Lauri: Her butt’s not doing anything.
Erik: It provides stability.
Clinton: Like a tail.
Me: She’s like a velociraptor.

Best Scenes: Other than the fantastic scene showing off Pert O’Bubble in her new bikini, the best scene had to have been the in-flight refueling. Now, I’ll grant that there’s already something a little sexual about one plane extending a long tube to inject another plane with live-giving liquid, but Cohen takes it to another level. The scene plays like airplane porn. I kept expecting the soundtrack to break into wakka-chikka guitars and both planes to start a wooden dialogue.

Transcendent Moment: The movie shows its true colors when Gannon jumps into EDI to pilot him. First off, why does the damn thing have a cockpit? (Heh heh. I said “cock.”) It was designed specifically so that it doesn’t need a pilot! Anyway, he jumps in and just like a giant metal boner, EDI’s joystick pops up between his legs. He then spends the next five minutes wrestling with it like he’s trying to jerk off on Space Mountain.

One look and you just knew Stealth was Yakmala fare. The surprising thing is how dull large sections of it are. It’s really only when a giant vagina is setting the sky on fire that the movie is remotely watchable. Yet another sentence I never thought I’d write.