YAKMALA!

The YouTube clip was called “Turkish Star Wars.” That’s enough of a reason to watch something. Turns out the clip is actually from a movie called The Man Who Saved the World. After watching this, I’m still not quite sure what the man actually did, other than jump around like an asshole.

Tagline: None

More Accurate Tagline: Let’s Hope Lucasfilm’s Legal Department Doesn’t Hear About This

Guilty Party: Writer/star Cuneyt Arkin. This guy is apparently a big deal in Turkey; he has two hundred sixty acting credits, twenty-six directing credits, seventeen writing credits and five producing credits. I have no idea if Turkish Star Wars is a good example of his work, but man, it’s a trainwreck. He’s also a medical doctor, which pretty much guarantees that I will never go to a hospital in Turkey under any circumstances.

Synopsis: This movie is nearly impossible to summarize. Despite having watched the whole thing without once getting up, I have next to no idea of what really happened. I’d also like to preface this by saying that no matter how strange anything I write is I am not making anything up. Anyway, the movie opens using footage from Star Wars, with narration by a guy who sounds coked out of his mind: he talks too fast, mangles his sentence structure and makes almost no sense whatsoever. There are good guys and bad guys. The good guys created a “crust of molecules from human brains” to protect earth, but the earth got blown up several times anyway, even though it’s still there. I know. Two pilots, Murat and Ali fight the bad guys, which consists of grimacing while a big screen TV plays Star Wars behind them. They crash land on a planet and Ali attempts to attract women with this piercing whistle that a dolphin would find shrill. Instead of women, he gets skeletons who capture Murat and Ali and make them fight for the amusement of a galactic overlord whose name is probably Bilgin. Murat and Ali escape with a bunch of kids and a woman that looks like she goes to the Joker’s beauty salon. Mummies made of toilet paper attack and kill nearly all the kids. This prompts Murat and Ali to a training montage that basically consists of attacking rocks and jumping around. Murat goes on a quest to get the only items that can kill Bilgin: a chintzy wooden sword and a rubber brain. He fights a variety of monsters mostly by jumping over them repeatedly. Ali betrays Murat to get the glory, but Murat still manages to beat Bilgin by mashing the brain into Bilgin’s face. Murat flies away to jump around like an asshole on someone else’s planet.

Life-Changing Subtext: As long as a man has a brain and a sword, there’s nothing he can’t do. I’m pretty sure this is actually the motto of the Turkish military. This probably explains why they haven’t done much since World War I.

Defining Quote: “Wait, what?” Though never said in the film, the Wolf accurately pointed out this is what you’re going to say pretty much whenever anything happens. “We must go at the speed of space!” “Wait, what?” “Whistling has attracted skeletons!” “Wait, what?” “The evil ones don’t have brains.” “Wait, what?”

Standout Performance: Of all the monsters that attack Murat, one is giant and red and sports a giant handlebar moustache. I’m left to conclude that this is Elmo’s bandido cousin El Mo. It could also be Elmo’s 19th Century weightlifter cousin Elmeau. Either way, he was very convincing, as, I don’t know, a muppet I guess? I think it was supposed to be some kind of monster, but it’s hard to tell. It was fun watching Ali tear El Mo’s arms off and beat him with them. I really felt El Mo’s pain there. It could have been the acting, or it could have been because I had already gnawed my own arms into bloody stumps in an attempt to feel anything at all. I’m typing this thing with my nose.

What’s Wrong: Oh, God… what’s right? In all seriousness, this movie is so convoluted, so bizarre, so cheaply made, so unintentionally homoerotic, so randomly religious that there was literally no way it would ever coalesce into anything even resembling a watchable film. When the narration that’s supposed to set up the plot makes as much sense as training a penguin as a heavyweight boxer, you’re in some serious trouble. “Crust of brain molecules?” Are you kidding me? I’ll tell you this: there’s no way I’m eating Turkish baked goods. Ever.

Flash of Competence: The footage from Star Wars was quite good, even if it was hard to see with Murat sitting in front of it looking like he was wrestling with a stubborn turd.

Best Jokes: I made a lot of genocide jokes that should probably never be repeated in the company of anyone. If I end up in hell, I’m blaming this movie. Of course, in hell, this movie is probably on a continual loop.

Best Scenes: The whole movie plays like something Borat would watch. The best parts involved the playfully homoerotic banter between Murat and Ali. They really seem into each other like the pilots in Top Gun, but minus Val Kilmer’s being in on the joke. Another great scene is about an hour in when the movie suddenly becomes religious, talking about how important Islam is to the universe.

Transcendent Moment: During the scene when Murat and Ali are rescuing the kids from Bilgin, it keeps cutting back to this robot throttling a child. Okay, it’s only kind of funny, mostly because the robot is a guy in silver cardboard, and who actually shows a kid getting strangled to death? But then it keeps happening. And it gets funnier every time. I can’t properly explain this in a way that will make me not sound like a serial killer, and I can’t in good conscience recommend watching the movie to see what I mean, but trust me. It’s like Marvin getting shot in Pulp Fiction multiplied by a thousand and in Turkish.

As badly as this movie sucked, I’ll watch it a hundred times before I’ll watch the Star Wars Holiday Special again.