Robert Clouse, who made a pretty good movie in "The Big Brawl", hit the camp mother lode on this one. I just don't know how he could make both the English-speaking and English-as-a-second-language speaking actors ALL sound as if they were struggling with the language, but such was his genius.
The plot (a rather scary one; Thomas is an operative sent to a country, so they might place a piece of equipment there crucial to the "Star Wars" monitoring system. Yes, I know, it was never implemented!) is threadbare and the lines are equally flimsy or poorly delivered. My favorite is when Paley tells Jonathan that this piece of equipment will help stave off "nuclear tack". One has visions of an irradiated fastener launched by a huge slingshot ala Wile E. Coyote.
The fighting, while good in spots and certainly acrobatic is laughable. Not only does he do somersaults and flips to get to various objects that could be walked to, prompting exactly NONE of the villains to say, shoot him in midair, but various objects that just happen to look like things you would find in a gym show up at crucial times. My favorite was the rock that was shaped like a vault, complete with "handles".
Thomas was a gold medalist at the Olympics, so this as well as boyish good looks got him this movie deal, carrying on the great tradition of Bruce Jenner in "Can't Stop the Music". One can only imagine the movie this would have been had Mary Lou Retton (Hey, she was in "Scrooged"!) been in it. "Flipkata", anyone?
If you have raucous friends who like to talk back to the screen, Gymkata is the movie for you.
The plot (a rather scary one; Thomas is an operative sent to a country, so they might place a piece of equipment there crucial to the "Star Wars" monitoring system. Yes, I know, it was never implemented!) is threadbare and the lines are equally flimsy or poorly delivered. My favorite is when Paley tells Jonathan that this piece of equipment will help stave off "nuclear tack". One has visions of an irradiated fastener launched by a huge slingshot ala Wile E. Coyote.
The fighting, while good in spots and certainly acrobatic is laughable. Not only does he do somersaults and flips to get to various objects that could be walked to, prompting exactly NONE of the villains to say, shoot him in midair, but various objects that just happen to look like things you would find in a gym show up at crucial times. My favorite was the rock that was shaped like a vault, complete with "handles".
Thomas was a gold medalist at the Olympics, so this as well as boyish good looks got him this movie deal, carrying on the great tradition of Bruce Jenner in "Can't Stop the Music". One can only imagine the movie this would have been had Mary Lou Retton (Hey, she was in "Scrooged"!) been in it. "Flipkata", anyone?
If you have raucous friends who like to talk back to the screen, Gymkata is the movie for you.