The Return of the Ghost of the Son of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 29 - Gymkata!

Ah Gymkata – the movie that combines gymnastics and Karate in the person of Kurt Thomas – this was his film debut and first and only starring role. He plays Jonathan Cabot – Olympic Champion Gymnast who will trained for a very special mission – he will go into the small country of Parmistain – which yes sounds like a type of Sandwich – which is somewhere in the mountains of a place in Asia – the Hindu Kush or Himalayas or somewhere movie’s a bit vague about where it is and it’s not that important as it doesn’t exist.

In any event Parmistan is apparently a perfect place for the placement of a US Star Wars Defense base – this was done in the 80’s when the dream of a space based defense system – Star Wars – which was a gleam in the defense establishment’s eye back then – and to date has cost Billions without really solving the problem of hitting a little tiny fast moving thing in something as big as outer space in minutes – but never mind – the plot is set in motion. Thomas will train to compete in the Game – the national game of Parmistain – and it ain’t bean bag – mostly one runs around and climbs while people dressed as Ninjas shoot arrows at you or otherwise try to kill you. And why does our hero – who looks 17 most of the time, dresses in loud colors  and whines do this?  – so that if wins the game the rules state he can ask the leader of the country for anything he wants in this case it would be a star wars base.

To let you know how deadly the game one of the earlier shots is of a competitor in the game getting shot with an arrow while trying to cross a ravine on a rope – one hates when that happens. He is shot by the man who turns out to be the heavy of the film – surprise. And the man who was shot turns out to be KT’s father (in the movie not in real life)

Actually for a hero KT’s  kind of unpleasant really – he’s got good moves on the gym equipment however. Which explains why he got the job. But he’s not a screen presence. He always looks like he’s wondering when Cindy is coming to the malt shop. And he whines a lot for a hero.

At any rate he is off for a training montage – here he meets the princess of Parmistan – who we later find out looks nothing like her father – this is explained by the film saying her mother was Indonesian – which makes her ‘interesting’ Thomas of course has the hots for her.

Anyway part of the training consists of him walking several flights of stairs on his hands – we get to see this a lot as he fails again and again and final makes it – we also get to see so much more of  him than one really wants to as the camera is positioned directly overhead so well let’s just say not a lot is left to the imagination.

Other training consists of his mind getting messed with the princess – as in getting flipped, or threatened with a knife or such. He eventually wins her heart with back flips.  Don’t believe me, watch the movie.

Training completed and the princess banged, the party stops at a way station before going on to Parmistan. The only reason I can see why this was done was so that the princess could get captured by the evil Parminstaiaians (say that fast we dare you) and that Thomas could have his first fight scene utilizing a conveniently placed piece of gymnastic equipment – in this case the horizontal bar – he sweeps and kicks and all that – he’s obviously a good gymnast why anybody thought that would translate into action hero well that’s not for me to say. Let’s say it was the 80’s drugs may have been involved.

After the Princess has been rescued and the bad guys killed – it’s off to Parmistain – and after a struggle with the rapids and Ninja’s KT and the Princess are brought to the capital of Parmistain where KT meets the Khan who looks and sounds a lot like Mel Brooks doing a bit from one of this films.  Here we meet the evil Zamir as well – last seen popping an arrow into KT’s dad – we don’t know it’s KT’s dad yet but hell it’s really not a major plot point.

Along with KT and Zamir, athletes from all over the world gather to play ‘the game’ when the game is played (is it a regular schedule like the Olympics or random) is a mystery as is what the other folks are here for – mostly arrow fodder but let that go – and are feasted the night before one of the new players is the secondary heavy named Thorg who wears a head band and what seems like a lot of padding.

Then the game starts – what happens is that the players are given a head start and then the pursuit team of what look like Ninjas led by Zamir follow after and kill anyone who they catch – there is some sort of zone restrictions but it’s not important, what is important is that folks are getting brutally killed.

KT and the rest are going along but suddenly Thorg stops to kill one of the other competitors and then tries to do the same with KT but eludes him and Thorg gets’ an arrow in his chest for this pains. Unlike seemingly every other time  this arrow does not kill Thorg but it slows him down a bit.

In his escape from Thorg KT ends up in the village of the crazies – which is peopled by insane killers – and for some reason it’s the largest town in Parmistan (life must be rather stressful). At this point KT walks on pigs Thorg tries to follow but fails and is pitch forked and eaten by pigs.

And now have the second using gymnastic equipment as a set piece fight of the film, the famous pommel horse sequence where for something  like 3 days KT holds off the crazies via using gymnastic moves on the pommel horse which was in the center of town – well they are crazies so maybe the lack of sense makes sense.

When all seems lost KT is rescued by his father the man we had last seen plummeting to his apparent death earlier in the film – but soon after is hit by another arrow.

Meantime it seems that Zamir seeks to overthrow Mel Brooks , sorry the ruler and establish a government ‘friendly to the east’ dudes I’m not really too hip on the old soviet union but they weren’t much for propping up medieval style kingdoms, peoples’ republics were more their style – well anyway all that is thwarted and Zamir is liked by KT’s thighs and who knows maybe he wanted it that way.

Silly silly silly movie.

Enjoy with Friends and hummus of various flavors.