[Scene: Music plays as we focus in on two movie critics, one hideously skinny and the other one chubby...]
SKINNY: Hello, I'm Gene Tickleher, critic for the Albuquerque Rodent Dropping Catcher.
CHUBBY: And I'm Roger Seebutt, critic for the Albuquerque Firestarter.
TOGETHER: And this is "Tickleher and Seebutt at the Moovies".
GENE: Today, we'll be reviewing "Julia's Underwear", a charming movie set in middle-eastern Europe.
ROGER: The story focuses on Julia, a young girl raised in a strict German home.
GENE: Julia's parents control every aspect of her life, from the food she eats, to the friends she makes, to the books she reads...
ROGER: To the underwear she wears. Believe me folks, there's nothing exciting about this underwear: huge, complex and unwieldy, it's not only larger than many of today's swimsuits, it's larger than some of today's jeans! (chuckle)
GENE: As she grows up, Julia learns that not only must she always WEAR underwear, she must never let anyone see it.
ROGER: One of the more poignant scenes in the early part of the story is when a 19-year-old Julia learns what happens to girls who expose their underwear... even accidentally.
GENE: Fortunately, all is not lost. At her 21st birthday party,
ROGER: Arranged well in advance by Julia's parents,
GENE: She meets a young construction worker; it seems Julia's parents had wanted to invite the "Prince of the Family of Rhodes", and instead ended up with a road worker called Prince.
ROGER: The mistake seems less than plausible, but it's an imperfection in the story I'm willing to live with.
GENE: Too often, moviemakers compound one implausible event with another, somehow hoping they'll cancel each other out.
ROGER: But not here. Prince doesn't turn out to be a prince, or anything even remotely close. Prince's real name is Sarang, and he's jokingly called Prince by the other road workers, who feed him *table* scraps, and pat him playfully on the head.
GENE: Needless to say, Sarang doesn't appreciate this, but tolerates it because of his love for the road he is building.
ROGER: So passionate is Sarang about this road, Julia can't help but be mesmerized by his tales of it.
GENE: It seems that fisherman in Mid-Europe are having trouble bringing their wares to areas far from shore.
ROGER: The movie establishes fish as the staple food of Europe, a slight historical inaccuracy, but a wonderfully well-acted inaccuracy.
GENE: Right! If I didn't know my history, I'd truly believe that Europe lived on fish alone... (chuckle)
ROGER: Which is what makes the road so important; it's a specially designed road to allow fisherman to drag their nets to the hinterlands, where fish is scarce. The road will save the lives of thousands of people, who would otherwise starve if the fisherman didn't arrive in time.
GENE: The road has the complex mutliEurolingual name "La Rue de la plaza o' hinterae netusco pullya"; Needless to say, Prince Sarang can't pronounce this properly, and embarasses himself in front of Julia.
ROGER: Julia, sweet as an angel, and more than a little smitten at this point, comforts Sarang and tells him to just call it the "Hinter-Net" road, which is exactly what they *do* call it for the rest of the movie.
GENE: As you might guess, after the party, Julia is nowhere to be found. The frantic search for Julia is somewhat half-hearted...
ROGER: After all, good little girls don't go running off, and there's no sign of a struggle.
GENE: Although we never see Julia's family again after the frantic search, we're left with the impression that they realize Julia *did* run away, but are too proud to acknowledge it.
ROGER: In a barely audible whisper near the end of this scene, Julia's father mutters, "Perhaps I never had a daughter"... and perhaps, years later at Julia's house, no one else remembers Julia either.
GENE: Meanwhile, Julia and Sarang head out on the Hinter-Net, a road surprisingly filled with unusual characters and adventures.
ROGER: You know, Gene, I thought Route 66 was an interesting road, but it's nothing compared with this movie's middle-European fishmonger's trail.
GENE: Sarang and Julia have many exciting and unusual adventures on the Hinter-Net, and with each adventure Julia becomes more exciting and less restrained.
ROGER: The end of each adventure also finds Julia and Sarang growing closer, though the movie deliberately keeps us from finding out how close.
GENE: The movie is also deliberately ambigious about the state of Julia's underwear...
ROGER: In some of the earlier adventure scenes, the undies are exposed. Julia, embarassed at first, becomes less and less so as the adventures progress. In fact, by the 8th adventure, when Sarang needs a bandage, Julia quickly rips off cloth from her dress, deliberately exposing the undies.
GENE: Of course, this is *hardly* exciting since the undies cover a little more skin than the average full-body cast.
ROGER: But as Julia gets freer, the undies get smaller. Julia fans, and there are many of them out there, will be more than satisifed by the scenes where Julia dashes about in minimal underwear, frequently finding it exposed.
GENE: And you know, Roger, I never realized Europe was such a *windy* place (chuckle). As the focus of the movie shifts from adventure to romance, the underwear scenes decrease, raising a new question.
ROGER: Julia's underwear is a symbol of her repressed youth, her uncaring parents, her structured life. By exposing it and wearing less of it, she rebels against the Draconian values of her parents.
GENE: But the question remains: Will Julia *give up* her underwear? Will she shed the symbol of her youth, or is it part of the very essence of her being? Does she still hold fond memories of youth, or is her past something she must totally discard?
ROGER: In a sense, the entire movie works up to the answer to this question. Now, we won't give away the ending, but, in a beautifully-filmed finale, we finally discover what choice Julia has made.
GENE: Actually, what choice*s*, but that's giving too much away (chuckle).
ROGER: OK, now on to our review. I found this movie touching, beautiful and sexy; the acting was wonderful, the scenery was wonderful, and the story was wonderful... I give it an enthusiastic "thumbs up".
GENE: I have to agree with you, Roger; brilliantly directed by Sarang, who also plays himself in the movie, this is the kind of movie from which legends are forged. It gets a "thumbs up", WAY up, from me.
ROGER: And lest we forget, Julia, who plays herself in the movie, underwear scenes and all, is also not only brilliant, but beautiful enough to be simply a visual treat to those who might not follow the deeper meaning in this film.
GENE: And that's all the time we have for "Tickleher and Seebutt at the Moovies"... be sure to tune in next week when we review some other fictional non-existant movie...
[fade out]