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Furiouser and Furiouser

After ramping up my interest in and dedication to these movies for the past few installments, my hopes were sky-high for this one. Ridiculous-stunt-wise, it was pretty much on point, but as a whole I was a bit disappointed. Not disappointing, however, are the keywords displayed for this movie on IMDb: car falling off a cliff, star died before release, terrorist, revenge, hospital.

We open on Jason Statham, and my first thought is that I’m gonna need to watch this movie with closed captions on so I can understand wtf he’s saying. He’s chatting with his brother, Gaston, who is somehow still alive (though very burned and in a coma) after being launched out of a burning plane (though technically so was Dom and he basically walked away unscathed. He vows revenge and then blows up a lot of the hospital, which seems like a weird choice considering his brother is there.

Dom takes Letty to Race Wars (OMG how have they not changed the name?) to try to trigger her memories. Based on the crowd there, it is apparent that these movies are 80% about cars and 20% about butts. Speaking of butts, Iggy Azalea has a cameo (more like Ugh-y Azalea, am I right?)

Brian is revving an engine, which, surprise! Is in the minivan he drives now because he’s a boring suburban dad now.

Letty runs off and Dom finds her at her own gravestone. Oof. He tries to smash it with sledgehammer and she’s like “No, it’s accurate, Letty died,” and then she takes off which is way harsh, Tai. I mean I get it, but I still feel bad for Dom.

Hobbs is working late at his whatever-it-is-that-he-does job. I know he must not have a strict dress code at [mystery government agency] but a skintight Under Armor tank top seems like it might be pushing the boundaries? He chases Elena, who works for him I guess, to her car to give her a job recommendation for some other job she wants to take. They have kind of a romantic vibe and if I’m being honest, I ship it. When he goes back in, Jason Statham is stealing info off his computer.

He’s like “I’m here for the team that crippled my brother,” and I have a lot of questions. How did he know to go to Hobbs for that info? How does he know it was a team? When he says “my brother,” how does Hobbs automatically know who he’s talking about?

Anyway, they start beating each other up and I’m immediately not liking the way the camera is moving during all of these stunts. If a guy somersaults and the camera spins with him, it’s like he didn’t move at all. I don’t watch action movies to see a ROOM flip over, I want to see a GUY flip over! I don’t know if it’s easier or harder to shoot stunts like this, but it definitely makes them look less impressive, or makes it harder to see how impressive they are.

Elena comes back to help her boss but Jason Statham throws a grenade and they basically jump out the window to save themselves. People in these movies love jumping off buildings onto the roofs of cars, like car roofs are mattresses or something.

Brian, Mia and Dom are hanging out at home. There’s a package on the porch for Dom, and Brian’s getting their son (Jack) strapped into the car. Apparently he’s restless as a dad because he “misses the bullets” from their adventurous lives, which is pretty fucked up. Mia’s pregnant again and tells her brother but not her baby daddy.

Dom’s phone rings and it’s Jason Statham calling from Tokyo right after smashing Han’s car and leaving it to explode. Dom looks at the package on his porch right when it explodes hard enough to take out half the house. It’s…bonkers. Brian slams the minivan door so Jack doesn’t get exploded, but the blast smashes his head into the window. This is the first of many times in this movie that I wonder “Is this how Brian dies?” I spend most of the movie waiting for him to die.

Dom and Hobbs (who has a surprise daughter!!!!) have a chat in the hospital room where Hobbs is laid up with a couple broken bones, basically the first character to ever have any physical repercussions for all their shenanigans. Hobbs is like “Definitely don’t go after this guy…wink wink wink.” It’s extremely weird that this team of car racing petty thieves is now the go-to group of on-call government assasins.

Dom heads to Tokyo and bumps into Mark Paul Gosselaar Jr racing in the garage. At first I was like “Man, Bow Wow has really aged well, he looks basically the same as he did in Tokyo Drift!” Then I realized it was just literally the scene from the end of Tokyo Drift. That also made it weird for the next, new scene, where Mark Paul Gosselaar Jr ages like 10 years in a few minutes. That must’ve been one hell of a race.

Dom is somehow in charge of bringing Han’s body back to the states to be buried in LA, which I find a little odd- does he not have any [other] family? Dom gives a speech and then leaves the funeral to chase the shady car driving by, which naturally has Jason Statham in it. Jason Statham speeds through a yellow light and Dom is stuck, and I’m pretty sure this is the first time in the entire franchise I’ve seen a character stop at a red light.

They play a weird game of chicken and fucking wreck each others’ cars instead of just shooting each other like gentlemen. Then some weird no-name guy who looks like the dad from Step By Step busts in with a whole bunch of stealth goons and Jason Statham gets away. The guy’s name is Mr Nobody and he’s played by Kurt Russell but doesn’t really look like Kurt Russell. Other people up for this role, according to IMDb: Denzel Washington, Halle Barry, Taylor Lautner. What did that casting call even say?? “Character description: a human, probably”?

Mr Nobody loves Belgian beers and wants Dom to find a hacker named Ramsey who’s built some sort of software called God’s Eye, which is basically a suped-up version of that thing from The Dark Knight where they use cell phone cameras to spy on the world. I don’t think any facial recognition software that fast/accurate exists, but sure ok whatever. A warlord has kidnapped Ramsey and Mr Nobody wants Dom to double-kidnap (rescue?) her and in exchange, he can use God’s Eye to find Jason Statham and murder him to avenge Han.

Honestly, Mr Nobody is such a weird character that I assumed he was a secret bad guy for most of the movie even though he said he was friends with Hobbs. Much like I also thought Han was a secret bad guy for most of Tokyo Drift. They keep throwing these mysterious benefactors at us with no explanation and I can’t help but assume they have ulterior motives!

Mr Nobody basically fucks a keg of Belgian ale and then invites (forces? this isn’t clear) Dom’s whole team to come help. Including Letty, even though she took off. Tyrese takes solo credit for everything they’ve ever done and tries to be in charge, but then Tej comes up with the ultimate plan, which ends up being to parachute in their cars out of plane in Azerbaijan. My notes just say “WHAT THE FUCK.”

The plan surprisingly ends up mostly working- they have to bust through a lot of armored jeeps with machine guns, and a heavily armed bus, and somehow Jason Statham is also there driving a sports car through the woods. Brian’s in charge of getting Ramsey (who I briefly also thought might be a secret bad guy) off the bus. Surprise: Ramsey’s an attractive young woman! Whoa! Women know how to use computers? That’s nuts. Brian basically chucks her onto the hood of Dom’s car and is like “you deal with this” and goes back to fighting a highly trained martial artist and matching him punch for punch. When did he become an MMA fighter?

Brian accidentally shoots the bus driver and the other guy traps him on the bus as it’s about to go off a cliff. Without a fully fleshed out plan, Brian climbs out the front door of the bus, precariously hanging over a cliff, climbs up it, and then runs up the bus as it’s falling off the cliff and launches himself at Letty’s car as she drives over to rescue him. It’s such an insane plan, I can’t believe that’s not how he dies.

Dom basically drives off a cliff with Ramsey in the car and they roll down a mountain and somehow find everyone else. Tyrese immediately starts creeping on Ramsey like “she doesn’t LOOK like a hacker!” Tej is like “What to hackers LOOK like?” THANK YOU TEJ. I hope Ramsey picks no one, but if she picks someone I hope it’s you. Brian is apparently also an EMT now because he starts asking Ramsey questions to make sure she’s not a concussion.

They head to Abu Dhabi to pick up “the device” for God’s Eye, which I thought was a program, because Ramsey sent it to her friend for safekeeping. When they get there they apparently have time to take a swim, where Tyrese gets that gem of a line “It’s hotter than I thought it would be.” Twist: he is not talking about the desert, but about Ramsey’s smoking bod! It’s funny when women are referred to as “it”!

Ramsey’s shit-ass friend is like “Great news! I sold it!” Who are you, the mom who sold her kid’s $5000 Magic card because he left it in her house? JFC dude. He agrees to get them into the party of the super rich guy who bought it, and believe it or not this guy put the device in his fancy sports car.

The gang gets to dress fancy and Dom and Letty have a Moment in the elevator where she starts to have flashes of memory. They have to sneak into a few different places and get the device out of the car without getting caught by this guy’s fancy all-lady security team, including UFC fighter/terrible actress Ronda Rousey. Brian and Dom get to the car and the plan is for Dom to just lift the car with his arms while Brian slides underneath to get the device. Somehow this takes about nine years.

The gang starts to get found out so they just hop in the car and crash through the party, right when Jason Statham shows up and starts shooting. It seems like a waste that they agreed to risk their lives to find Ramsey in exchange for using God’s Eye to find Jason Statham if he’s just gonna show up everywhere they go anyway.

They end up driving the car out of the penthouse apartment and into a building next door, where they smash a bunch of terra cotta warriors. I really hate when antiquities get smashed in movies. I did not care for that scene in The Core when they blew up the Coliseum. Leave antiquities alone!! They drive through some more buildings and Brian rips the device out of the car from inside it, and they manage to bail right before the car plummets to its death.

They do not explain how everyone else managed to get out of that fancy apartment without getting shot by Jason Statham or put in Abu Dhabi prison, but they do at least kind of try to explain how God’s Eye words. They find Jason Statham, and Dom and Mr Nobody start coming up with a plan to take him out. Dom’s like “My guys are racers, not killers.” Dom, since when has that mattered to ANYONE. They’re also not detectives, computer experts, safe crackers or martial artists, but that hasn’t stopped them from being masters at all of those things!

Brian and Dom, plus Mr Nobody and his team, take off for another quip-fest at Jason Statham’s warehouse. Jason Statham brings in the warlord who originally kidnapped Ramsey, and his whole team, and I’m fairly certain this is the scene where Brian is going to die.

Mr Nobody gets shot, and Mr Nobody’s number one dies. Dom and Brian drag him out of there, they lose God’s Eye, and as it turns out Mr Nobody isn’t even dying. They abandon him by the side of the road (he had a helicopter coming but it still felt kinda cold) and head back to the gang to figure out what’s next.

Dom is gonna find Jason Statham (bad guy #1), and the rest of the gang is gonna roam the city so Ramsey can counter-hack God’s Eye to shut bad guy #2 (Djimon Hounsou) out. I feel like law enforcement definitely should’ve been trying to do something about Djimon Hounsou’s chopper with the torpedo drone. As should be expected, they’re making a big fucking mess and Hobbs sees it on tv. I kind of forgot that he wasn’t in most of this movie.

Hobbs is like “Daddy’s gotta go work” and flexes so hard his cast breaks off. This is not an exaggeration like when I said Mr Nobody fucked a keg of Belgian Ale. This is an actual thing that happened in the movie.

Dom meets Jason Statham on a rooftop and they start wailing on each other with wrenches. We already know Dom beat a man halfway to death with a wrench, so I like his odds here.

Brian has to break into a cell tower to do something so Ramsey can keep hacking. I feel like there’s WAY too much going on in this movie. He has to fight the same henchman he fought on the bus, which I always like. I like when each protagonist has their own henchman adversary through the movie and it’s like “Oh, you again.” Once again I’m sure this scene is how Brian dies.

Hobbs jumps an ambulance off a bridge to take down Djimon Hounsou’s torpedo drone, then he rips the machine gun off of it and carries it around with him to try to shoot down the helicopter. Somehow Brian gets the cell tower to do whatever he was trying to do, and Ramsey’s 80% complete hack just finished up without having to start over. I don’t think any of this is how computers work?

Dom and Jason Statham are still wrenching each other and yet neither has any major damage. Dom’s like “The thing about street fights, the street always wins, “which is probably the dumbest line in the whole movie. He basically pushes Jason Statham into a crevasse in the crumbling parking garage and jumps his car at the helicopter to deliver them a bag of grenades, which Hobbs shoots with his machine gun and takes the whole thing down.

Dom absolutely should not have survived that, but the team rushes around and Brian gives him some extremely terrible CPR, and Letty gushes about how she remembers everything. Surprise! They’re married. No one even knew! She wore a surprisingly feminine wedding dress. He comes back to life and they’re in love again.

Somehow Jason Statham survived and is in jail now, but is surprisingly cocky about his escape plans.

Everyone else goes on a beach vacation (or maybe just to the beach, they do all live in LA.) Ramsey’s just…in the family now. Did she not have a life or friends to go back to from her pre-kidnap days? They’re all creepily watching Brian and Mia play with Jack on the beach.

This is where the movie gets fucking weird. I don’t know if this is an unpopular opinion, but the end of this movie is Bad. They’re all extremely emotional about Brian being “home” and how “it’s never goodbye.” I understand that they’re symbolically saying all that about Paul Walker, the actor, who died, but the character, Brian, is alive. We’re still in the movie world! You can’t start the in memoriam for the ACTOR while the movie is still happening!

Dom takes off in his car, but then Brian pulls up to him at a light and they race for a little while and then go their separate ways, and also a bunch of old clips of Brian from the previous movies play with a light Wiz Khalifa soundtrack. It made me questions whether I’d missed something or if they were implying Brian was a ghost. Maybe this would’ve all made more sense if I’d seen it closer to when he actually passed away, and not the day after I was tweeting how creepy it was that he met his girlfriend when he was 33 and she was 16? I’ll never know. I do know that I definitely thought that Brian would die when Paul Walker died, and I enjoy that they let him live, elsewhere, on a beach with Mia and their kids. Have a nice life, Brian.

Previously:

Vol 6: Planes, Tanks & Automobiles

Vol 5: 5ast 5ive

Vol 4: Fast & Fourious

Vol 3: What’s even the point of driftng?

Vol 2: 2 Furious 2 Quit

Vol 1: The Fast & the Curious

#the fast and the furious #furious 7

Planes, Tanks and Automobiles

Fast & Furious 6 opens with Dom and Brian racing along some absurdly beautiful coast and looking very mad at each other. I SEE RIGHT THROUGH IT, YOU GUYS. YOU CAN’T HIDE THE BROMANCE. They’re actually racing to get to the birth of Brian’s baby. (Where were they coming from? Why wouldn’t Brian stay home with Mia when she’s so close to giving birth? He’s a criminal millionaire, it’s not like he had a day job to get to.)

This movie has opening credits like it’s a TV show- like a nine minute super-cut of the best clips from all the previous movies. I’m on board.

I still don’t understand the bond between Dom and Elsa Pataky (or just her character in general. What’s her deal?) It’s gonna be awkward when Letty inevitably comes back.

Hobbs is somewhere, talking to…some suspect. We’re supposed to think it’s Dom, but then he walks around to see him from the front and surprise! It’s not Dom. You couldn’t fool me, movie. As if Dom would run off so soon after the birth of his nephew. Don’t you think we know how important family is to him? He starts beating the shit out of this guy, and someone watching is like “Is this legal?” Hobbs’ partner (whose name I only knew after I looked it up on IMDb, so I’ll call her Angel Dust because that’s her character in Deadpool) is like “nope.” It’s bordering on a little too self aware, but I laughed.

Hobbs comes to see Dom for help, and Dom is like “nah you can’t make me,” but Hobbs gives him the new pictures of Letty. Extremely chill Elsa Pataky is like “babe you should go, it’s fine, I get that I’m your second choice and honestly, likewise.” I’m pumped already, I love a good “criminal with a heart of gold helping to catch the TRUE bad guys” story (Catch Me If You Can, White Collar, etc etc.)

Dom is like “Brian, you should stay, you literally just had a very cute baby moments ago with my sister.” Mia is like “No, you’re stronger together. You always were.” Except all the times they worked as a team and people died, but sure OK. Hobbs is like “I know you guys are a family.” No shit, Hobbs.

I am again surprised that Wonder Woman is in this movie, even though I like and am committed to her character now. I just feel like I should have known? She and Han get a call to meet up. Tyrese turns his private jet around to come join the team. Luda showers some pals with money from an ATM and heads off to meet everyone. They’re like the Avengers, and Hobbs is…Nick Fast&Fury? Is that a thing that works?

They’re trying to catch some extreme bad guy played by Gaston. In true Fast & Furious fashion, all character motivations are laid out very quickly and quietly with very little detail. He’s assembling the pieces to create some kind of device to black out communication “for a whole country” (any size country??) for a day, so he can sell it to somebody, probably. I don’t fully know what law enforcement agency Hobbs works for, but somehow he only has one partner and this band of thieves to work with to find the world’s foremost super-criminal. They all negotiate “wipe our records” deals, which seems silly at this point because you know they’re just going to dirty them right back up again.

They wire up Fake Vin Diesel and send him in to see Gaston so they can catch him. As if it’s gonna be that easy. While they’re watching that go down, Interpol gets robbed, but Gaston basically traps all the cops in the city underground (are they all dead now?? Is this the scene in the franchise with the most fatalities?) and we get the first car chase of the movie, because apparently the gang are now in charge of investigating security breaches at Interpol.

Gaston has this insane low-slung racecar with a little scooper on the front so any car that hits him goes flying. It’s a true evil genius contraption. Cars are flipping left and right. Do cars actually flip that easily? Also, I feel like flipping cars would result in more injuries. More of these people should be dead or at least concussed.

Dom takes off after Letty and after cornering her, they both get out of their cars for their grand reunion. Except Letty shoots him in the shoulder and takes off. Yikes!

Gaston pulls out files on all the good-bad guys, and they find a picture of Letty sitting on Dom’s lap. She just says “That’s the guy I shot.” Letty in this movie is like Peeta in the last Hunger Games. She apparently lost her memory in the car crash that everyone assumed killed her.

They need some cars for their plan, so Hobbs and Luda go on a cute lil man date to a fancy car auction. Hobbs is like “You aren’t thinking about stealing these cars, are you?” Dude this is what you get for hiring car thieves. Some snooty guy comes up to them with some racist nonsense so Luda buys all the cars and also makes him give them his clothes.

Wonder Woman and Angel Dust go try to flirt some info out of a mechanic but he pocket-dials Gaston so he can send some goons. Han and Tyrese can see the goons approaching, but don’t do anything to help, stop them, or warn Wonder Woman and Angel Dust. There are a bunch of fight scenes, which I find kind of boring (these movies aren’t called The FIST and the Furious) but no one dies and they steal some insane harpoon contraption from the mechanic.

They realize that Gaston is working with Braga, the bad guy from Fast & Fourious/Wonder Woman’s old boss, so Brian decides to sneak back into the country with the help of that guy whose face he smashed into a wall a few movies ago.

Paul Walker and his they-must-be-color-corrected insane blue eyes get moved near Braga and he almost gets knifed to death a bunch. Braga tells him that he’ll only get near Gaston if Gaston wants him to, which isn’t really all that helpful. Also we learn that he found out about Letty’s memory loss and passed her along to Gaston.

Meanwhile, Dom gives himself a random night off and heads to Rita Ora’s street race, where he races Letty through a lot of traffic. Is no one racing on closed streets anymore?? He looks at her car and says “You never could resist American muscle,” which, nice. Smooth. I like it.

They chat in an empty parking lot and he reminisces about all their good times and she’s like “sure if you say so, stranger.” Question: if she has no memory, why is her name still Letty?

Gaston shows up and they quip back and forth for a while instead of just shooting each other. Dom almost get snipered but since Hobbs was there they were equally gunned and both backed down. Frankly I think Hobbs should’ve just shot Gaston while he had the chance.

Hobbs figured out where Gaston’s hideout is, so he’s like “Let’s go nail that son of a bitch” and he and Angel Dust barge in. THAT’S YOUR PLAN? TWO PEOPLE TO CATCH THIS NOTORIOUSLY SLIPPERY, DANGEROUS INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL????

Hobbs calls Luda, which is unremarkable except for the fact that his phone says “Samoan Thor,” and I laaaaughed and laaaughed.

Because he’s some sort of magical one-man TARU, Luda deduces that they’re going to steal “the component” (this is what they call it, I don’t know what it is) from an army base in Spain.

They move the component in a convoy to some secret new location, but Gaston and his crew attack the convoy and hijack a freaking tank! (Side note, the convoy is being escorted by 2 giant Jeep-y things, but they’re very easily taken down by bullets. Why wouldn’t you have this super valuable component escorted by some sort of armored vehicle? It was previously housed on an army base!

This tank just starts rolling over all the other cars on the highway, but somehow when the gang races in with their speedy speed cars they’re all going about the same speed. How fast can this tank go?? (I googled it and it said “up to 45 miles per hour on roads,” and “Some tanks have even gone as fast as 60 to 70 miles per hour for short periods of time” so I call shenanigans on this.)

I appreciate that the family is trying to draw attention from all the civilian cars because it seems like that tank is going out of its way to run directly over random cars (which, again, I think could easily outrun the tank except for when it crossed over and started going against the flow of traffic.) A LOT of people died in this scene.

They lasso the tank’s gun and us a car as an anchor, and Gaston sends Letty out during this high-speed tank chase to fix it. Except at that second the tank lurches, Letty goes flying, so Dom launches himself across a highway overpass to grab her and smash through a car hood. I think I yelled “WHAT?” out loud.

Han and Wonder Woman make such a cute team, but I know something has to happen to her since she’s not in Tokyo Drift, and it makes me sad in advance.

They capture Gaston and his few remaining goons, Letty defects to the good side, and they all head back to the army base. It’s extremely clear from the ominous music that this movie is not over.

Brian talks to Letty and apologizes for her amnesia, which he blames himself for. She’s like “I’m sure you didn’t make me, we cool.” According to imdb THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THEIR CHARACTERS EVER SPEAK TO EACH OTHER IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE FRANCHISE.

Gaston says he kidnapped Mia and she’s dead unless he gets to waltz out of there with the chip he stole from the tank. Brian and Dom freak out and the reasonable army guy is like “That sucks but too effing bad, we’re not gonna let a super-criminal go just for this.” Hobbs, the coolest/worst government agent ever, is totally fine with letting Gaston walk but also the family doesn’t get their records cleaned anymore. Obviously they’re like “family first.”

Gaston leaves but first turns to Letty and is like “Hey babe you coming?” Angel Dust is like “Hell yeah you bet.” OH SHIT! I briefly suspected she was a double agent like an hour ago but I forgot about it because frankly she’s not that interesting. I guess I was right all along.

They immediately start another chase scene while Ludacris starts trying to block the cell signals so Gaston can’t put in a call to have Mia killed. Ludacris joined this series as a street race facilitator; I’m not really sure why he’s a hacker now? They’re all like “Where tf does Gaston even think he’s going?” but then a giant plane appears overhead and drops a ramp for them to drive up.

On the plane we’ve got Gaston, Angel Dust, and Enormous Tattooed Goon fighting Dom, Brian, Letty and at some point, Hobbs.

Mia is also there, but she’s a lover not a fighter. I find it comical that Gaston is supposed to be an even match for Dom.

The rest of the team is in cars chasing the plane, also fighting some goons. They harpoon the plane a few times but the lines are anchored to the cars so eventually the plane starts lifting the cars off the ground as it tries to take off. Finally, the moment I’ve been dreading arrived. Wonder Woman falls off a car (heroically and on purpose to shoot the goon who’s about to attack Han) and presumably dies. RIP Wonder Woman.

The plane is eventually disabled by all the harpoons and gunshots, and it bursts into flame/explodes. Letty and Hobbs had made it off the plane, and Dom had somehow ejected Gaston who is presumed dead. Everyone is worried Dom is dead but he emerges from the rubble shockingly unscathed. Mia looks at Han and asks “Where’s Giselle?” which is apparently Wonder Woman’s name. Hugs and tears all around.

Dom hands the stolen chip, which he’d recovered from the plane, back to Hobbs and says all he wants is to go home. The family has a nice chill barbecue at the house. Hobbs shows up and makes fun of Tyrese’s forehead, which is weird since most of them are bald and Tyrese doesn’t even have a big forehead.

Hobbs and Dom talk about something but to be honest I wasn’t paying attention because I was just looking at the weird perspective of these shots. Why do these shots look so weird? Why is The Rock’s head so big?

Elsa Pataky, who is back to being a cop again, comes in to say goodbye and Dom is like “You don’t have to go.” I honestly thought he was gonna pitch the idea of a threesome (which, frankly, I kind of think would make sense in this weird family dynamic. A polyamorous alpha trio?) She and Letty high five over having the same boyfriend. The end.

Epilogue: That scene from Tokyo Drift where Han dies. Except after the crash, Jason Statham throws Dom’s cross necklace on the ground and calls him on the phone as he walks away from the rubble.

I’d been really torn on whether to watch Tokyo Drift 3rd or 6th (aka release order vs chronologically.) I had friends arguing for both and I see the merit in both sides, but I watched in release order. The downside was that when Han died, I didn’t really know or care about him, and when I DID get to know him I knew he was doomed the whole time. However, if I’d watched Tokyo Drift 6th and seen that mid-credits scene, I’d already know he dies in the next movie (and on a smaller level, it spoils that insane shot where they drift around the corner and the crowd scatters like ants.) I’ve settled on, for first viewings, watching them in release order makes sense. For any subsequent viewings, chronological is probably better.

Previously:

Vol 5: 5ast 5ive

Vol 4: Fast & Fourious

Vol 3: What’s even the point of driftng?

Vol 2: 2 Furious 2 Quit

Vol 1: The Fast & the Curious

#the fast and the furious #fast and furious 6

5ast 5ive

I watched this directly after Fast & 4ious and honestly it was one of the best choices I’ve made in my life. Also these movies are starting to get good so it’s harder to make fun of them.

This one picks up literally the very moment that the last movie left off: Brian is driving in with Mia and the gang to hijack the bus taking Dom to prison. I was in the middle of typing “I am so excited to see how they do this” when the bus swerved and then just started rolling down the street.

Obviously Dom or Letty must’ve been in charge of making their other schemes stealthy and graceful, because this was some clumsy shit. Enter PERD HAPLEY to say there are miraculously no fatalities. Do those buses even have seatbelts?? Also obviously Dom is missing after the crash because he’s run away to live his best life.

Apparently the gang splits up, because the next thing we see is Brian and Mia (who is FINALLY being styled like a Hot Girl) being almost shot by a bunch of people in Rio. They get saved by Vince, who now looks more like Frank from How to Get Away With Murder than Jamie Dornan. Vince has a girlfriend and a kid now, and from the way Mia looks at that kid she is very obviously pregnant.

Vince asks them for their help with a “straightforward” heist, and since Dom isn’t there to do it, they agree, kicking off an insanely badass stunt. Sincere sidenote, Justin Lin’s commitment to practical effects is probably the best thing to happen to this franchise, as one of the things I laughed out loud at in the first movie was how terrible the effects were.

They CUT A HOLE in the side of a train, pull cars out, then drop them off the back of a truck to drive away. It’s honestly very impressive, as unrealistic schemes go. Brian notices they’re seized property, which I don’t understand the significance of at the time, and somehow in there they figure out they’re going to be betrayed or something and they all start punching/shooting each other.

Brian leaps onto the truck, punches some more guys, crashes the truck into the train, and Dom gets away in the last of the cars. The guy they’re fighting also murdered a bunch of DEA agents. This all ends with Brian leaping off the truck onto Dom’s car before he hits a bridge, then they drive off the cliff like Beyonce and Lady Gaga and leap from the car into the beautiful water that is the same color as Paul Walker’s eyes. It’s so ridiculous that I literally laughed out loud.

Vince disappears, and then comes back, and then gets sent away for attempting to betray everyone? I think? The Rock finally shows up as some sort of cop who has the type of jurisdiction that allows him to just snap peoples’ necks, apparently. He’s trying to catch Dom and Brian, but the drug cartel who they were working with on the heist also want to catch/kill Dom and Brian. There’s a lot of gunfire (I mean A LOT) and all the main people escape unscathed but I can only assume about 100 henchmen are killed. The Rock’s partner is Elsa Pataky, who is troubled in some way based on the death of her husband I think? I’m extremely unclear on her character motivations, to be honest.

Dom wants to split up and run, still carrying the chip they stole out of the car that the drug cartel wants back. Mia tells them she’s pregnant (CALLED IT) and that she doesn’t want to lose her family, so they figure they’ll just steal all the drug cartel’s money and disappear to somewhere without extradition. Then they say the 5 words I’d been waiting for: “We’re gonna need a team.”

Since this is the Ocean’s Eleven of F&F movies, we bring in all the best & brightest from the previous films. Tyrese is retconned into being a charming fast-talker instead of a hot-tempered violent misogynist. Ludacris is basically a one-man CSI. Wonder Woman is back, which surprised me a little because I didn’t think she was all that interesting in the last movie and also she was working for the bad guy there. Han is back, being a cutie pie as usual.

Those two guys who helped hijack the gas tanker in the last movie are also back, exploding bathrooms and stuff (my notes literally just say “shitsplosion” with the wailing emoji.)

They go through all the standard heist-planning plot points. Surveillance, putting trackers on the cop cars so they can move without getting caught by The Rock (who was able to find them via facial recognition even though they had masks on, which is a stretch even for fictional law enforcement.) The drug lord moves all his money into a safe inside the police station.

One of the last things they need is a handprint from Reyes, the drug lord. Wonder Woman goes to the beach with Han and flirts with Reyes, and they PULL THE HANDPRINT OFF THE ASS OF HER BATHING SUIT. I’m going to pretend that this is a thing that’s possible because it’s just too funny.

It’s finally heist day, but uh oh, The Rock shows up to arrest everyone. I feel like this movie is like one of those nature specials where a polar bear is trying to eat a baby seal and I can’t decide who to root for.

Can’t Hobbs and Dom just get along? No[t yet]. Hobbs is finally a reasonable foe for Dom, who’s been beating people up in really easy fights for the last few movies. Eventually they get arrested and the whole gang gets carted off in armored SUVs (including Vince, who’d disappeared for most of the movie but was allowed to come back because, say it with me, he’s family).

The drug henchmen fire some sort of bazooka at the armored vehicles (honestly it’s weird that they care that much about getting the stolen chip back considering they’ve already moved all the money?) and a firefight even bigger than the one in the first part of the movie starts. As all the drug henchmen close in on Hobbs, the gang comes out of nowhere with a bunch of guns they must’ve stolen off of dead bodies and save his life. Poor Vince gets a bullet to the gut in the process and eventually dies.

Somehow, Hobbs is totally cool with them being like “We still need to complete our mission,” and even helps them by crashing through some police station walls in that armored truck. In a twist I didn’t see coming (though I later found out it’s in the trailer, which kinda sucks) they pull the entire safe out of the wall and drag it behind two cars for the final chase of the movie.

Now, I know that most of the stunts in these movies aren’t “plausible” by most definitions, but this one really takes the cake. They pull the safe behind them for SO LONG and for a lot of the time it’s not even throwing sparks. I also feel like speeding around a turn with the safe would mean that it would yank them backwards as it kept trying to go straight. Statistically there must also be a ton of civilian casualties.

In the end they use the safe to clobber basically everyone to death, Dom tries to play solo hero but Brian comes back to shoot Reyes (my notes say “of fucking course”) and save Dom’s life. Hobbs is like “You get a 24 hour head start but then it’s back to jail, and also you can’t have this money.” Well if they can’t have the money why the hell did you just help them steal it, HOBBS??

Double twist: they swapped the safe at some point so the gang DOES get the money. Dom gives a sack of cash to Vince’s lady, RIP Vince. Luda uses his loot to open his own garage so he can do what he loves (didn’t he already have his own garage? It’s unclear.) It’s very endearing. Dom, Brian and Mia escape to somewhere beachy and beautiful and Mia is pregnant AF. I’m normally very cynical about most tv/movie relationships but damn they’re cute together. Elsa Pataky is also there for some reason. I still don’t understand her deal.

(epilogue: TRIPLE TWIST- Eva Mendes shows up to bring Hobbs a file, and it’s got a picture of Letty in it. She’s FINALLY coming back from the dead!)

Unrelatedly, a thing I learned from this movie that I forgot about until right now is that drug dealers measure money by the pound? That’s can’t possibly be a real thing, can it?

Previously:

Vol 4: Fast & Fourious

Vol 3: What’s even the point of driftng?

Vol 2: 2 Furious 2 Quit

Vol 1: The Fast & the Curious

#the fast and the furious #fast five

Fast & Fourious

Let’s address the elephant in the room. It is absolute insanity that “The Fast and the Furious” and “Fast and Furious” are two separate movies. They couldn’t at least call this one “Fast and 4ious”?

The movie opens with a pretty sick gas truck hijacking scene, and a look at Michelle Rodriguez’s much improved styling (why, in the first movie, did she constantly wear sunglasses but look at people over the top of them? Why even bother wearing sunglasses?)

After narrowly escaping death (which seemed avoidable- why did that truck driver seem so alarmed by the road’s sudden curve? Was he not PLANNING to turn there?) there’s some talk about family. I assume.

Han, who helped rob the truck, says he’s gonna head to Tokyo and peaces out for the rest of the movie. Dom and Letty play grab-ass. I think I was still typing “I like a bad boy protagonist who’s in a committed relationship across several movies” when we find out that Letty was murdered.

Admittedly it puts me at a disadvantage to be watching these movies several years too late, since I know Michelle Rodriguez is in more movies and I assume they can’t all be flashbacks. I kept waiting to find out that her death was faked, but it never happened. I wrote “I still don’t believe Letty is dead” in my notes at three different points during this movie.

In other “yep that’s definitely how that works” events, Paul Walker is all grown up and…a cop again. (I know he was grown up in the first one, but he finally cut off that early 2000s surfer kid hair.)

He’s playing by the rules just like anyone given their third unlikely chance at a career in law enforcement would do: chasing a gun-toting criminal through a market and across rooftops before eventually tackling him off a building. They definitely should’ve both died.

More excellent policework: Paul Walker smashes some other cop’s face into the wall in front of everyone. His boss says “Do you know the difference between a cop and a criminal? One bad judgement call.” My dude, Paul Walker has made like 97 bad judgement calls, I don’t know why you keep letting him be a cop.

Somehow the guy that Paul Walker is looking for is also the guy Vin Diesel is looking for (to avenge Letty’s death) so they manage to connect again. These movies have such loosely cobbled together plots that it’s hard to tell what doesn’t make sense because the details will come together later, and what is just poorly explained.

Finally we’ve got a race! Vin Diesel takes off with his car doing a wheelie, which I didn’t know was a possible thing. Do cars actually do that? Also, they’re supposed to be following a particular route, but Paul Walker somehow gets off course and has to drive down a flight of stairs to get back in the lead. Does winning even count if you don’t follow the prescribed route? It’s also probably safe to assume that most of the other drivers are dead based on the horrific crashes they got into.

Paul Walker is apparently undercover, which is weird because he’s literally been chasing criminals from this same group of people and I would imagine they’d recognize his beautiful face. Also, Wonder Woman flirts with Dom and he’s like “no thanks I’m all set with my dead girlfriend.”

They get jobs as drug runners, Brian because he’s actually doing his undercover police job for once in his goddamn life, and Dom because he’s trying to avenge Letty, who is still definitely not dead. Somehow no one thinks about the fact that terrifying drug lords might check to make sure that their drivers aren’t being tracked- so when Brian kills his tracker, his police bosses are like “oh no, we better send in a helicopter and maybe ruin everything!” Guys, if you can’t trust your man to do what he needs to do, maybe stop letting him go undercover with such dubious criminals?

I don’t remember at what point this happens, but Mia was really mad at Brian, then for some reason she was crying in a kitchen, and then she and Brian start making out and basically bone in the kitchen sink. I guess that’s all it takes and they’re back together now.

After they drive through a nightmare tunnel of death, shit really hits the fan as Dom explodes everyone’s cars, Brian whips out a machine gun (from where??) and shoots probably way more people than he should. It turns out that Fenix (whose name I assumed was Felix the whole time), another drug driver, was the person who killed Letty. Also Wikipedia says “Brian has prior knowledge that after the heroin was delivered Braga ordered the drivers to be killed” but I literally do not remember that at all. Was it a quiet conversation? It’s basically impossible to hear any dialogue that isn’t shouted in these movies.

Brian and Dom take off with all the heroin, hide it in plain sight at the police impound (which is actually kind of a clever idea, maybe?) and then Dom beats the shit out of Brian when he learned that Letty was working undercover for Brian, trying to clear Dom’s name so he could come home. It’s like a deadly “Gift of the Magi” situation. Because this is a PG 13 movie, Brian can get choked out and beaten half to death and not have a mark on him.

Dom (a man who says grace before eating) threatens Braga (the drug lord) with a shotgun while he’s praying in church. Seems legit. There’s one more chase scene through the death tunnel (which, it’s bananas that Brian even knows where it is, considering he only drove through it once, at night, while following other people). Brian has the kidnapped Braga in his car, yet all the henchmen are shooting at them willy nilly. Good job almost shooting your boss? Eventually Dom runs over Fenix, almost all the henchmen die in the tunnel, and the cops finally show up.

[I tried to insert a gif here but it wouldn’t animate so fuck it, just watch it here]

Dom allows himself to be arrested, and my main question is did they make him a specially fitted prison jumpsuit? Or can Vin Diesel really just make a standard issue orange jumpsuit look that good? I don’t even think Vin Diesel is hot! What’s going on!? He gets sentenced to 25 to life, which is obviously not actually happening.

(in trying to find this screen grab, I also found a bunch of The Rock rocking a prison jumpsuit, which I assume is a spoiler.)

The movie ends with Brian, Mia and some other pals driving in to hijack the prison bus to set Dom free. Brian DEFINITELY can’t be a cop in the next one, right???

Okay these are getting good now. I’m getting pumped up for Fast Five!

Previously:

Vol 3: What's even the point of driftng?

Vol 2: 2 Furious 2 Quit

Vol 1: The Fast & the Curious

#the fast and the furious #fast & furious

What’s even the point of drifting?

True life: I watched all of The Fast & the Furious: Tokyo Drift and I still don’t fully understand what drifting is.

The movie opens with a 30 year old high school student and the oldest brother from Home Improvement. In case you needed proof that this movie was written by a man, when these two are trying to decide the stakes of a race, Brad Taylor’s girlfriend says “the winner gets me.”

30 year old high school student, who looks like a young, surly Mark Paul Gosselaar, is somehow given the choice between juvie or Japan, so he ends up moving to Tokyo to be with his dad. What a thinly veiled plot device to get Mr Alabama to Japan!

Despite being specifically told he’d be heading to juvie if he touched a car, Mark Paul Gosselaar immediately headed to a race. He flirted with the hot girl from his class, who appeared to be Vanessa Lachey’s little sister.

MPG gets challenged to a race by the Drift King, who I think is an adult but is somehow dating high school student mini Vanessa. Like the first two movies, there are basically no context clues to figure out how old anyone is, so it’s super weird that these adults are cavorting around with high school students. After learning what drifting is (is it the ability to make tight turns? Is it driving sideways?) MPG mostly just smashed the shit out of the car he borrowed from some guy named Han (who, for most of the movie, I suspected was secretly a bad guy.)

There’s more racing, and more drifting, and for some reason Han takes MPG under his wing to teach him how to drift. Is drifting just an extremely risky alternative to normal turning?

Some things happen that I don’t fully understand (something about Han betraying Drift King?) but there’s a car chase and Han dies. Mark Paul Gosselaar’s dad very reasonably tries to send him away, so he doesn’t get murdered, but MPG is like “No dad I have to stay and do this. For myself.” Do WHAT? I’m so unclear on what score he’s settling. Han was the one stealing (I think?) and he’s dead now.

Anyway, a big mountain race happens. At this point there are no repeat characters and no one in this movie is particularly likeable, so I really couldn’t care less who wins and who plunges to their death. Vin Diesel shows up at the very end to race Mark Paul Gosselaar and says he knows Han, which I assume will be explained in the next few movies.

The end. Also I realized that young Vanessa Lachey is the girl from the Bruno Mars “Just the Way You Are” video, where I also thought she was Vanessa Lachey.

So far this is my least favorite.

Previously:

Vol 2: 2 Furious 2 Quit

Vol 1: The Fast & the Curious

#the fast and the furious #the fast and the furious tokyo drift

2 Furious 2 Quit

Full disclosure, I wrote most of this after spending the afternoon at a beer event, but frankly this movie is so bananas I don’t think it would make much of a difference if I waited to re-read it in the morning posting it, so it’s just going to live on like this!

I had a lot of questions going into this movie, based on the ending of the previous movie. I can’t say they exactly get answered satisfactorily, but I set the bar pretty low at “I hope they at least get addressed.”

Two minutes into this movie, anyone who knows me should know that Suki’s all-lady team are my favorites. I was extremely relieved to find out that they don’t end up being the villains.

I know Ludacris is introduced in this movie, but I do not care for the fact that you can audibly hear him rap the lyrics “too fast, too furious” in his first scene. Save that shit for the credits!

Paul Walker showed up in this first race, specifically called by Luda, and I still don’t know if he’s still a cop. Where is Vin Diesel’s crew? Why does Paul Walker still not have friends? Is Ludacris also a cop? Why is Paul Walker’s car British??

I laughed out loud when the cops shot his car with that electromagnet bazooka thing, which I immediately looked up to see if it’s a real thing. (It is not, they made it up for this movie.) As it turns out, Paul Walker is no longer a real cop but somehow has escaped criminal charges for helping Vin Diesel get away at the end of Fast & Furious 1. Did they let him skate on those charges, or is he currently a fugitive? To my knowledge, this is never addressed.

Despite the fact that Paul Walker (“Brian”, which I still can’t bring myself to call him) definitely already aided & abetted a violent criminal, who was his previous undercover mark, they allowed him to go back undercover with a random partner of his own choosing. Naturally, his partner is another criminal: Tyrese, who can basically be described as “toxic masculinity, the person.”

They had to run an errand as an audition for their potential employer, whose name I thought was Verona for the whole movie and who looks like some other actor I can’t quite place. This resulted in some driver getting run over by a truck. The scenes when they’re racing like this on the open highways with other cars give me anxiety, as I know I would surely die if I were driving on that highway. Also the cops show up and bumble into the middle of the test and almost ruin everything (don’t worry, Tyrese shoots at them!)

When they’re done with the errand, Tyrese and Paul Walker have a meeting with their employer and his assistant/girlfriend, Eva Mendes. I really hope this is the type of movie where Tyrese and Paul Walker fight over Eva Mendes for the whole movie and she chooses neither of them. I have a feeling this will not be that kind of movie.

Paul & Tyrese bring their cars to some buddies, looking to get the tracking devices that the police installed removed. This is surely a foolproof plan! Your criminal-adjacent mechanic pals definitely won’t notice or care that this is government-level surveillance!

I had been annoyed to realize there might not be any racing in this movie after they established that their main plot would be transporting goods for Verone. I was glad to see I was mistaken, and they raced some of the jabronis who didn’t get the Verone job. Paul Walker somehow managed to win the race, and now they have to get two cars back to the garage, giving us our first “cars hilariously driving in formation” shot of the movie.

Paul Walker and Eva Mendes talked loudly about being cops in the middle of a room full of people who'd definitely kill them if they learned they were cops, as all good undercover operatives do, before they’re called to see Verone. Verone showed them a torture scheme I can only describe as “needlessly complicated” as he used a rat, a bucket, and a blowtorch to convince a cop to help him with his plan. For how mainstream popular these movies were, they are truly bonkers.

Everyone made it out mostly unscathed, but the next day Eva Mendes showed up looking freshly showered to Paul Walker’s houseboat where he lives I guess. It’s so out of nowhere that I assumed it was a dream sequence, but apparently it was not. Also she kisses him, which I thought maybe I’d missed some context for but really I think it just happened out of nowhere.

It’s finally time for their Verone errand! Even though, according to Eva Mendes, they’re probably going to get killed when it’s over, and the customs official doesn’t give a shit. Somehow the rat-tortured cop didn’t come through with his end of the bargain, despite his entire families’ lives being threatened, so Tyrese and Paul Walker had to fight through tons of cops to get the duffel bags of money to Verone. Fortunately, all those cops repeatedly driving into each other made for some amazing comic relief.

The absolute most insane thing that happens in this movie is when they drive a car onto a boat, from the land. It’s one of those things that makes me wonder how I never heard of this happening back when this movie came out. Were they not popular enough back then to get that kind of buzz? How were we not all running around talking about this stunt? How is there no gif of this available currently? I don’t know if I can fully explain how badly I would’ve liked to be in the room when this idea was pitched.

Unexpectedly, Paul Walker did not end up with Eva Mendes, though he did steal some cash out of the evidence bag, which I’m sure is a great plan for someone with a freshly wiped criminal record. Gotta start rebuilding that record with some new crimes!

Previously: Vol 1: The Fast & the Curious

#the fast and the furious

The Fast and the Curious

When I read this New Yorker piece about the new Fast & Furious movie being set in New York City, I thought maybe it might be time to finally catch up on this franchise, even though I imagine none of the scenes described in that will be in the movie, which is a damn shame. These have been around for 16 years (there are probably people who can drive who weren’t born yet when the first movie came out, which is truly disgusting) yet I’ve never seen any fast nor furious movies.

I texted my boss to see what she thought. She loves the Fast & the Furious movies and I’d been nervous to tell her I’d never seen any, since the last time I expressed apprehension about one of her favs I was bombarded with Harry Styles gifs for an entire workday. She was enthusiastic, we got tickets to see The Fate of the Furious together, and now I’m fully committed to watching every movie in this series in the next seven days.

When I popped the DVD in it started playing a Paul Walker “drive safe” PSA, which was definitely an extreme bummer of a way to start off what was supposed to be a fun distraction from the dumpster fire of our current world.

I had no idea that it would start the same way as National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (with a car driving under a truck.) A solid 15 minutes later, I still had no idea what was going on. I would have been concerned that I’d accidentally started with the wrong movie if not for the fact that the dvd cover helpfully clarified “the original.”

I admittedly had no idea about even the general plot of this, or any of the movies in this series. At one point I hit up IMDb to see who played Vince (Jamie Dornan’s tough older brother, I assumed) and the description spoiled the whole undercover cop plot twist about ten minutes too early. Frankly, it also answered a lot of my questions (Where did Paul Walker come from? Why doesn’t he have any friends? Why doesn’t he care more when his car gets exploded?)

One question that does NOT get answered: what is up with Jordana Brewster’s styling? While she’s obviously beautiful, it’s so hard to tell what was just baffling early 2000s fashion and what were character choices. Was she supposed to be “the hot girl” or “the pretty girl next door”? Was a half-ponytail a hot girl styling choice 16 years ago? Are hot girl love interests just more overtly sexual in movies these days so by comparison she seems plain? WHO KNOWS.

It also blows my mind that Vin Diesel and Not Jamie Dornan straight up ASK Paul Walker if he’s a cop, he doesn’t even say no, and they’re like “fair enough, this checks out, let’s continue with our lives as planned.”

I had a couple simultaneous thoughts during the scene where Brian (which is a totally fine name but kind of a goober name for a high-risk amateur street racer) confronts Vin Diesel. One was that I will never have the confidence to pull into parking spots as fast as everyone in this movie does, and the other is that it’s extremely apparent from Paul Walker’s acting ability that this movie came out right after She’s All That.

At this point, after the very poorly named street race, “Race Wars,” the gang takes off to go do some crimes and Paul Walker is left with Jordana Brewster. Granted, all my knowledge of undercover policework comes from the episodes of SVU when Stabler puts on glasses and pretends to be an investment banker so he can bust up a coke ring, but I’m pretty sure at no point are you supposed to blurt out “I’m a cop!” Also, I read that Eminem was considered for Paul Walker’s part, so take a minute and think about how different a franchise it would be if they went that route.

It’s the middle of the night when they leave *cringe* Race Wars, so naturally it’s broad daylight when it cuts to the gang attempting to hijack a truck, which is both realistic and definitely a good idea.

However, this truck driver is no fool and he pulls out a shotgun to defend himself against Not Jamie Dornan. Even after they start trying to cut and run, he keeps shooting at everyone and their cars. I can understand that he’s just trying to protect himself and his cargo, but is his plan literally to just murder four people? I’m not sure what the limits of self-defense are in his situation, but that seems out of control. It also begs the question, what happened to the drivers of the other two trucks they robbed? Were they able to give a statement or describe the drivers of any of the vehicles? Were THEY murdered?

Anyway, some of them manage to get away, everyone finds out Brian is a cop, and then the murdering begins. I’m definitely having a bit of a Goldilocks situation with the amount of murder in this movie. I feel like in the beginning of this I expected there to be more murder, but suddenly I’m surprised by the amount of murdering that’s happening. The sad squirrelly kid gets murdered. The guys who murdered him also get murdered. Paul Walker and Vin Diesel race to beat a train across the tracks for reasons I still don’t totally understand and they both almost die, but then don’t.

As Vin Diesel wrecks his car and Paul Walker gives him his, I assumed some loose ends would get wrapped up before the credits started to roll. I assumed wrong. Does anyone get arrested? Does Paul Walker get in trouble for straight up murdering that one guy on the motorcycle and then just leaving? Do they just give up on catching the truck hijackers?

Fortunately for me, I’ve got another six movies to find out the answers (assuming they get addressed. Is Paul Walker even a cop anymore in the rest of the movies? Don’t answer that.) I look forward to all the randos being replaced with additional A- and B-list celebrities, and I hope that they never stop driving down the street in formations like a gang of sentient cars from the movie Cars.

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I can't remember if I've shared this before, but since I saw Save Ferris last night, this is my college a capella group doing "Mistaken."

iamcarriesoom

All the clothes I wished I owned

As described in Hanson fanfic circa 1998-2000. So many chunky-heeled shoes. So much Delia’s. I can’t tell if this is indicative of my awful fashion sense, or of how weird fashion was at the time, or both.

(The main character was named Seileen, which was pronounced Shayleen, because apparently I named my characters like a bougie Park Slope mom.)

She changed into the outfit she had picked out to wear on the plane; black, flared jeans, and a navy blue sweater.

“Then wear the black shirt, you know, the fake Adidas one , with the white stripes down the arms?” Marcy told her.

Sei slipped her feet into her orange plastic Vans and somehow managed to find her rust-colored corduroy jacket.

She changed into her pajamas. The top was white with stars and moons printed on it, and the pants were white with blue stars printed on them. She put her blue bathrobe and slippers on and went outside onto her balcony.

She put on tan corduroy wide-leg pants, and a green Union Bay sweater with a tan and orange stripe down each arm.

She found her funky orange and tan plaid socks. She pulled those on and her blue plastic skechers sneakers.

She found a maroon, v-neck, long-sleeved velour top in the back of her closet. The maroon in that perfectly matched her maroon corduroy flares that she’d bought on boxing day.

She rummaged through the piles of new shoes that she’d accumulated with her many shopping expeditions with Marcy and finally found her black and silver platform saddle shoes from Delia* s. She slipped them on over her black and silver plaid socks and grabbed her jacket.

She slithered out of bed like an old snake.* She decided to wear her purple, wide-leg corduroy pants that day, with a long-sleeved, ribbed lavender shirt.

She dug through the top drawer of her silver, metallic dresser and found purple socks with silver threads woven in throughout. She pulled these on her feet, which were freezing on the cold, wooden floor. She found, after much searching, her favorite shoes, her custom-ordered, grape-purple Doc Martens, with a chunky heel.

She wore her wide-leg jeans from old navy, and an argyle sweater, knitted by her mother.

She put on a maroon, grey and navy plaid, pleated skirt with maroon tights and a navy, long-sleeved polo shirt and her incredibly high platform clogs.

She grabbed her wide-leg, american eagle jeans from the floor of her closet and hastily pulled them on.

She shot out of bed and hurriedly dressed in her maroon corduroy flares , grey velour t-shirt and navy blue fleece. She brushed her hair back into pigtails and slipped her feet into her doc martens.

Sei laughed as she pulled her purple chenille sweater over her head.

She was wearing a floor-length, dark purple velvet long-sleeved dress.

———————————————

She stood up slowly and stuffed her feet into her comfy old pink fuzzy slippers. Slipping on her satin bathrobe she tottered down the stairs and seated herself at the familiar kitchen table.

Marcy reached into the closet and pulled out khaki cargo flares and a pale blue, v-neck sweater.

Taylor kicked off his doc martens as Sei slipped her feet out of her too-big brown leather chunky-soled shoes.

She meandered back to her room, threw on a pair of jeans and a black v-neck short sleeved shirt.

“Want to go the mall? I need to get something to wear under my meshy sweater for the Hanson’s new year’s party.”

With her black vinyl skirt, she wore a red v-necked shirt with three-quarter length sleeves and knee high boots with a small platform.

Her red tankini top clung to her stomach while also covering enough to make her feel comfortable. The waist of her matching red boy-cut bathing suit bottoms stuck out a bit over the top of her orange and yellow tropical print wrap-skirt, tied loosely at her hips. She took a swig of lemonade and pushed her glittery red cat-eye sunglasses off the top of her head to rest coolly on the ridge of her nose.

———————————————

The fans began to leave the room, giggling, talking in hushed, excited tones, and giving Sei dirty looks as they glanced at her swollen belly, half camouflaged by a red hooded sweatshirt with glittery flames down the sleeves. Her hair was pulled back into a high, messy bun on her head and she wore a visor her friend had made her, covered in duct tape with a star on it.

“Isaac can tell you everything some other time, ok?” she told him, staring at her bump-toed shoes with flames on them.

*”She slithered out of bed like an old snake” is by far my favorite sentence I’ve ever written.

iamcarriesoom

Oh wait I found more

She put on her bright, sunshine-yellow Lerner New York tank top and black running shorts with white stripes down the sides.

Xanthe rushed down the stairs, wearing black flared stretch pants and a navy blue sweater.

She dug through her bag and pulled out a long, loose white skirt printed with pale pink shells, along with a simple white tank top. She dressed herself in that and slipped her feet into her platform slide shoes from Delia*s.

One had long blond hair and was wearing flared jeans and a red and white striped, spaghetti-strap tank-top. Another had chin-length dark brown hair and was wearing black flared stretch-pants and a grey sleeveless sweater-vest over a long-sleeved white t-shirt. The keyboardist had shoulder-length, dark-brown hair that was in pigtails, and was wearing wide-leg indigo jeans and a red, white and blue sweater from Old Navy.

Astrid slipped her arms into an old dress shirt of her dad's and left if flapping, unbuttoned over her orange tank-top.

She got up, pulled on jeans and a t-shirt with the logo for the London Underground on it.

She was wearing a red and white striped t-shirt with a white collar, and blue denim overalls. Her black and plum hair was in pigtails, with red white and blue spotted ribbons around them.

Starshine pounded back down the stairs in a light blue JNCO t-shirt and her brother's JNCO kangaroos.