Street Fighter

December 7, 2005

“In a world where good guys wear blue camo and bad guys wear red camo…”

Street Fighter is all about the costumes. The only discernible plot to speak of is the pursuit of each character’s costumes.(I’m not the first person to point this out.) They spent so much time contriving ridiculous situations to get “normal people” into silly costumes that the film didn’t make ANY sense at all. At least Mortal Kombat made a little bit of sense. And now I must make the full disclosure that I have always been a Mortal Kombat fan – not so much Street Fighter. Maybe it’s because I spent too much time standing bored next to the Street Fighter machine at the Circle K, but I’d like to think that it’s because Mortal Kombat was and still is a superior game with superior characters. Come on, FATALITIES! Street Fighter – the game and the movie – just doesn’t compare.

For a film called ‘Street Fighter,’ there sure wasn’t much actual fighting. I was totally disappointed by the lack of one on one fights. I was also disappointed with the lack of Dhalsim. Dhalsim was my favorite character, partially because he had blue skin and also wore a diaper. He also made super annoying noises. I always love that in a video game character. I spent the entire film anticipating his arrival – and he never showed. Then, at the very end, the Indian scientist inexplicably became bald…and I figured out that he must represent Dhalsim. What a fucking cop-out!

Hmmm…Kylie Minogue. I had always wondered how she filled her time between ‘The Locomotion’ and ‘Can’t Get You Out of my Head.’ Now I know – starring in shitty video game movies with Jean-Claude Van Damme. Okay, that is a complete and utter lie. I doubt that Kylie Minogue entered my consciousness even once during the entire decade of the 90s.

Every five minutes or so, I’d ask my husband when Alyssa Milano was going to show up. Finally, halfway through the movie, he finally told me to stop asking him, because Alyssa Milano wasn’t in the friggin’ movie. She was in Double Dragon, a totally different, but probably equally shitty video game movie. Maybe he thought that I would make him change the channel if I knew she wasn’t in it?

I was going to end the review making fun of Jean-Claude Van Damme and his oh-so-serious portrayal of General Guile…but truth be told, this is one of his better performances. True, he’s still a Belgian, chest-shaving midget with a cocaine habit…but he does bring a certain two-dimensional-ness to the character. It’s as if he watched hours and hours of real gameplay and modeled his acting upon the “real” General Guile. Amazing.