A Year of Garbage Movies #76, “2001: A Space Travesty” (2000)

The lie I chose to tell myself to make it through this movie is as follows.

Leslie Nielsen sits in a high-backed chair in the Nielsen Cave, observing a panel of monitors. His face is a study in grim concentration.

He had hoped it wouldn’t re-emerge again on his watch, but the evidence was undeniable.

In the top-left screen, a massacre is playing out. A room full of screen-writers are laughing hysterically and chewing each other to pieces, while a single giggling figure paws at the door with a crumpled manuscript in hand. Eventually it opens and he can be seen sprinting down the hall on the other monitors. He collides with a man wearing a director’s hat, knocking him to the ground and cramming the papers into the confused man’s open mouth. The director chokes and sputters, ripping out a single page which he first examines with bemusement, then mirth. Moments later, he’s shrieking hysterically and holding his ribs.

The perfect joke. A killer. Spreading like a virus and wanting nothing more than to be shown on the big screen to bring ruin to civilization as we know it.

Jenkins, the butler, emerges from the darkness behind Leslie.

“Oh no sir, I thought…”

“Me too, Jenkins. I was certain that we’d seen the end of it with Wrongfully Accused, but it’s back. Plain as day”