There are Feminist Jungles in California?

Last week Bill Maher proved himself to be a giant blowhole when he encouraged the public shaming of people who happen to be overweight. Now, you might call that a lapse in judgement or an opinion that might need revising upon further consideration. You might say, that a person might reasonably make the statements Bill Maher made and think that he makes some good points about health and that what is really needed is his attitude to adjust because Bill is a smart guy. But if you think that, I encourage you to take a minute and look at his entire career. Because no matter what you think of what Bill said last week, only a completely moronic person would intentionally choose to star in Cannibal Women in the Avocado of Death. And that is exactly what Bill Maher chose to do.

I suspect that you can tell from the title that this film sucks. Yet, if you were not sure, let’s add in the fact that the big co-star of this film was Shannon Tweed. If you don’t know who that is you are probably not in the KISS army. Shannon is married to Gene Simmons of KISS. From that you can probably tell that her judgement is not the best. Even with these stars who were around the Z list at the time, the movie would have gotten no better if we had Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan playing the respective leads.

I tortured my own eyes for ninety minutes of this thing and I will never get that time back. The, I don’t know if you can call it one, plot of this film is so stupid that I find it hard to summarize here but I am gonna give it a shot.

We start off with two guys walking around what can only be described as a forest not a jungle. They seem to be lost until they find an avocado on a string. One guy goes to grab it, at which point there is unnecessary nudity and a bunch of women wearing bikinis shoot arrows at the guy and then promptly tie up the second guy who is too stupid to even run away.

Next we find out there is an avocado shortage in the United States of America and the military must do something about it. What can they do? Well, there is an avocado jungle in the middle of most of California. We know this from a map that a military guy shows. We can tell it is a jungle because it is made of straight green lines and says Avocado Jungle on it. This guy is talking to Shannon Tweed aka Dr. Margo Hunt. See, she is a prominent ethnographer and professor of feminist studies at some university. The problem with this jungle is that in the jungle there are cannibal feminist women there. The military threw tons of resources at taking the jungle, including heavy weaponry, tanks etc. The problem was that the women fought back with sticks and spears and the modern military had no idea how to deal with that. The proof? At the edge of the jungle they found dog tags covered in… guacamole. Have I mentioned this is supposed to be a comedy, I think? Anyway none of the jokes ever land in this thing.

So naturally the military think that maybe it takes a feminist to catch a feminist. They let Dr. Hunt know that another famous feminist has gone missing after attempting to go into this jungle. This convinces Dr. Hunt to not only go into the jungle but also to take one of her students, Bunny. Bunny is a home economics major considering becoming a feminist. She can’t seem to decide between wanting to have a husband and bake or becoming the first female president of the United States.

Off they go, after a really dumb visual joke implying that women can’t drive. What’s the joke? The line on the map heading toward the jungle circles in ridiculous directions. They finally end up in San Bernadino which is apparently the last stop of civilization before this jungle. Err… I have driven all the way to San Diego before and you know what? THERE. IS. NO. JUNGLE. THERE. I know, I should calm down, this is just a joke but oh my God this movie is stupid.

As if that was not dumb enough, Dr. Hunt and Bunny decide to stop in a bar and look for a guide to take them deep into the jungle. A Rambo type, a ninja and a pro-wrestler offer services until they find out where Dr. Hunt wants to go. Then they all chicken out. What Dr. Hunt really needs is a man’s man. Who is that? Bill Maher. Yeah. No kidding. This is the guy this film chooses to portray the most stereotypical aspects of masculinity. Bill freaking Maher. That is only one of the billion reasons this movie is so stupid.

Anyway, of course Bill aka Jim goes because Dr, Hunt and Bunny have no other options. Next we have to spend an uncomfortably long time hearing about how men should behave and how women should behave as they basically meander through dry areas of Southern California that will look familiar to anyone who has ever lived there, driven there, or seen a single movie set in Southern California.

At one point they come across a village of men who live apart from the avocado women and get along by knitting and giving these things to the avocado women so they won’t get eaten by the feminists. Yeah, I am not making this crap up.

So Bill Maher being the prototypical male that he is, digs out a whole bunch of beer and teaches these guys “how to be men”. “Beer. Now there’s a temporary solution.” – Homer Simpson, poet and philosopher.

Next thing you know these guys are catcalling Bunny and asking if she wants to ride in their corvettes. In my humble opinion, Jim wasn’t teaching guys how to be men. He was teaching them to be jerkwads who should just shut up.

Finally we come across the cannibal women and their temple. You know what their temple looks like? Exactly what I would imagine the back side of the building used for the university looked like. And yeah, we all saw this coming, the feminist who was missing is now the leader of the avocado women. Why? From what I can understand, she didn’t want to go on David Letterman anymore. Yeah, that was the joke. No, it wasn’t funny at all. Not even like dad joke funny, these jokes were just stupid.

These women immediately want to cook Jim and Bunny wants to join the avocado women because they get to wear cute outfits. Just to mention, these outfits are completely impractical bikinis, that sort of resemble jungle leaves that you would not find in a forest which is where this is filmed.

Bunny can’t kill Jim because she is in love with him. Dr. Hunt escapes and finds a rival group of cannibal women who hate the avocado women. Why do they hate them? They want to eat the men with clam sauce instead of guacamole. Yeah…

Dr. Hunt ends up fighting with the missing feminist, using weapons that would never have shown up in a jungle. Dr. Hunt kills her adversary but not before finding out that the military has a plan to get all the avocado women to come to Malibu (which is in the middle of where the jungle is shown on the California map if you know anything about California geography) where they will be brain washed with spa treatments and Cosmopolitan magazines. Did I mention this is supposed to be funny?

Jim, Bunny and Dr. Hunt get the avocado women to start a dialogue with their clam sauce rivals and head back to the university. Dr. Hunt threatens to expose the whole military plan on David Letterman unless she gets a grant for researching expanded opportunities for women in the military and a healthy dose of cash for her department. Meanwhile Jim and Bunny get married because, I guess someone has to kiss Bill Maher on occasion?

Ughh. I lived through watching this and now retelling it so that’s twice I have forced this thing upon myself. A couple of things before I sign off here though.

First of all, Shannon Tweed in real life is actually pretty smart. Her bad judgement in marrying Gene Simmons aside, I have no idea why she would agree to be in a film this stupid. I get why Bill Maher is here, he needed a career boost at the time. It did not age well for either of them though.

Second, never let it be said I am not an equal opportunity reviewer. James Cordon had a response to Bill Maher’s remarks and in it he mentioned how both of them have used poor judgement in their film careers. Jame’s opus of stupidity is apparently called Lesbian Vampire Killers and he says it’s every bit as bad as you think it is. Is it though? Is it? You can bet your last freaking avocado I am going to find out!

Feministically yours,

Slick Dungeon