Movies that are chawesome.

Not sure what the smoke is, but I'm already pumped for this movie

Sometime around middle school, my chums and I were into declaring puns and stupid jokes as cheap. 17 years later, "awesome" is my most-used vocabulary word to date. This brings up the not-that-hard-to-connect-the-dots portmanteau of chawesome. As the group morphed during high school into my current family of best friends, we passed the time watching cheap films.

There were a few summers where we may have watched 10 movies a week...and drank a few cases of Mountain Dew and Dr Pepper to wash down the tooth-rotting candy, cinnamon buns, and popcorn. I walked away from those years having a way higher appreciation for films like Star Wars I and The Matrix 2 and 3. Everything people griped about PALES in comparison to some of the drivel out there. Yeah, you didn't like a certain actor's performance, or how a producer has too much of their fingers in the film? Tough tits. Wait until you see Street Zombies (AKA Ozone) or Dragonball Evolution or the most recent live-action Street Fighter movie, then gripe about something like Keanu Reeve's performance in Reloaded.

Lots of complaints...still a badass movie.

All that aside, there are a few dirt-covered gems that have a special place in my group's hearts:

"Yurr all ahhnndur-arrest!" Street Fighter The Movie is about as chawesome as it gets. Watch Jean Claude Van Damme struggle with pronunciation as the most American of Americans in the pantheon of Capcom caricatures of national/racial stereotypes as he delivers rad one-liners. One-liners remind us that we're watching movies and not sappy reality-clones. The buck doesn't stop there, though. There are at least 3 key moments. Guile recruits soldiers for the last hurrah, but not before claiming that he would keek det son-f-a-beetch-Bison's ess so hwort that the next "Bison wannabe" would feel it. The main villain, M(ajor) Bison, who plays his role like his life depended on it, doesn't go out like no chump. In one scene, he captured one of the fighters who loathes him, talking about how he came to her village and killer her peaceful father and enslaved the locals. Bison: "For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday." Referring to himself in the third person, like a boss. 

Suit-up sequences, oh-so-much neon, Nicole Kidman being as hot as humanly able, Val Kilmer's lisp as Bruce Wayne, and Jim Carrey as Jim Carrey-with-and-without-green-suit for 90 minutes. Ohh yeah, these are all chawesome chunks of Batman Forever, one of the more complained-about movies from the 90s. Too cartoony for the average Joe, and not nerdy enough for the average fan, this movie is too-often unappreciated in it's heaping levels of chawesomeness. On one hand, you've got an ironically one-dimensional Two Face who gets to open the movie by terrorizing an idiot cop ('s glasses) with BOILING ACID while he tries to lift a heavy safe through a styrofoam wall via helicopter. On the other hand, you've got not only a statuesque Batman who gets to seduce the insanely gorgeous Dr Chase Meridian on top of a roof, but he gets a moving hero shot (I can't find this shot outside of the music video, sorry) that's actually well-lit (I'm looking at you, Dark Knight Trilogy!). Unfortunately, that jump ends in our hero getting punked.

It's worth mentioning that Batman and Robin is another gem, with occasional moments of chawesomeness. 

Straight-shot, suit-wearing supercop Ray Tango pairs with jeans-and-mullet horndog streetsmart Gabriel Cash (who gets to bang Teri Hatcher!)  in Django Uncashed Tango & Cash . Lethal Weapon-style banter chock-full of one-liners, TWO psychotic antagonists, obligatory prison scene, and even gratuitous nudity! I...tear up when I think about 90s action movies. The opening scene has the classic cop-dips-pinky-into-cocaine-and-licks-finger-to-confirm action, and the movie ends with an explosion.

55 seconds into this-here clip, you can see one of my favorite uber henchmen in all his stereotypical glory, along with some clever lines of dialogue.

To sum up; most movies are far from perfect, but if you're reading this, next time you're about to quip that a director ruined his entire saga by adding a few seconds of graphics to it, remember the truly terrible movies you've seen, and then feel better because I guarantee some of those are chawesome and worth a second look!