You'll remember Karen as Boone's fun-intolerant, professor-chasing girlfriend in Animal House, and the hard-drinking female side-kick in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Yes, racoonish Karen Allen was in the movie, but she didn't stay dry long and her only line appeared to be "Mayday! Mayday!" Nonetheless, she still managed, with those few words, to out-act the Easter Island Head-like Clooney, whose big "big dumb ducks" speech was so monotone and lacking in emotion that director Wolfgang Petersen felt compelled to play it twice in case anyone was still left wake after the first time. We'll get to the hugs in a moment, and there were some, but the movie, like the Quake of Aught-6 and Katrina of Aught-5 did represent a big sweeping-away. What was swept away? From this crow's nest it looked like the whole point of the movie was to wipe out men, and to lay out the it's-so-obvious case for why that would be a good idea.
All the women in the movie were smarter than the men, on just about every point, and more productive economically. All of them were set-up as wiser, and they all survived at the end. The men? Nothing but a bunch of beer-guzzling yahoos, who spend all their time abusing animals, chain smoking and greedily pursuing an occupation. They all die. They all die, that is, except for the shamefully clichéd Retired Fisherman Barfly and the evil Controller of the Means of Production Exploiter, the fishing boat owner.
Weirder still, in the totally unheroic ending segment, incongruously played after a movie-long earful of inappropriately heroic score, they all seemed totally okay with it — dying that is — as if they had confessed to capital crimes, had made their peace and were marching off serenely to the gallows.
Except for all their "lamp shaking" servicing of the women, the men really had no other purpose here than to be set up like bowling pins, and knocked down as a penalty for all their gun-toting animal cruelty, chain smoking and greedy pursuit of gainful employment. This posed no end of frustration to the obnoxiously noble, scenery chewing gals.
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