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Je n'aime pas dans les vieux films américains quand les conducteurs ne regardent pas la route. Et de ratage en ratage, on s'habitue à ne jamais dépasser le stade du brouillon. La vie n'est que l'interminable répétition d'une représentation qui n'aura jamais lieu.

Tankman Begins (2005) - Joel Gallen

In this five minute comedy short, Jimmy Fallon is late for his gig hosting the 2005 MTV Movie Awards!  He needs a hero . . . and a ride!  Cue Batman arriving in the Batmobile.  Now, the main comedic premise here, heh heh, and it is a good one, heh heh heh, is . . . ha ha ha, now brace yourselves because, chortle chortle, this is, ha ha ha, quite a hilarious bit here.  If you’re reading this at home and anyone is in the house with you sleeping, you probably should stuff some old rags down your throat or something so as to muffle your screams of laughter once I explain this to you.  Okay, so, get this, hee hee, the joke is that the Batmobile, snicker snicker, from Batman Begins . . . heh heh heh oh god are you ready for this you better be because here it is: it looks more like a tank than a bat. 

Okay, well, hopefully you’ve managed to compose yourself enough to read the rest of this review at this point.  Oh my sides.  Anyway, this short features a lot of footage from the big police chase in Batman Begins with Fallon inserted in cutaways doing some of his unfunniest work and Andy Dick as a policeman pursuing the Batmobile.  It is as soul-crushingly unfunny as it sounds and at a whopping five-minutes in length, it feels about four times that long.  This is all building to the big reveal when, just as the Batmobile arrives at the MTV Awards, Batman unmasks himself to reveal that he is, in fact, Napoleon Dynamite, Jon Heder himself.  I wish I was kidding. It is mind-blowing to me that Napoleon Dynamite and Batman Begins are roughly the same age.  I mean, I liked Napoleon Dynamite back when it came out, but, man, it feels like an entirely different era of filmmaking than Batman Begins.

Anyway, this short is included among the extra features on the Batman Begins blu-ray for reasons that I can only imagine have something to do with blackmail, and it actually kind of pisses me off.  This deserves to disappear like the piece of crappy cultural ephemera it is.  Instead, it is now archived in the Christopher Nolan 4K box set like some kind of meaningful art, like it gives us insight into the auteur theory or something.  What a turd.  Gets half a star because I actually kind of enjoyed writing this review.  ½ star.

tl;dr – painfully unfunny comedy short features Jimmy Fallon inserted into Batman Begins; soulcrushingly terrible.  ½ star.      

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