The Spree

We soldier on. There is nothing else to do. The canon of Hulu movies stretches on before us like the cold, ash-covered highway. Our shaking hands grip the push bar of our shopping cart, shoving it through mile after mile of the barren hellscape. Does the coast even exist, or was it all a dream? We walk on. “Do we still carry the fire?” the boy asks. “Shut up,” we answer. “Just shut up.”

I watched The Spree last week. It is a movie starring Jennifer Beals and Powers Boothe. If you want to know why there is a man named “Powers” in the world, then it is because the world is a sad and confusing bastion of mysteries, in which cruelty is a virtue, stupidity is rewarded, and groups of adults pool their collective intellectual and creative resources in order to manufacture the basest, stupidest, most illogical creation of our time.

 Pictured: The Internet's sole media file of anything related to The Spree

The Spree is about this woman named Xinia (I know) who is a famous cat burglar (of course) but falls in lust with a detective (such is life) and they try to sort out their erotic (I guess?) yet treacherous (supposedly) relationship. It is rated R for Worst.

Okay. Real talk. This movie is an erotic thriller. You just have to let some things slide in erotic thrillers. Like a horrible, porno-esque soundtrack. Why shouldn’t an erotic thriller have a horrible, porno-esque soundtrack? Would you ask the sun to stop shining a horrible, porno-esque soundtrack?

But, you’ve got draw the erotic line somewhere. If you, The Spree, are going to be an erotic thriller, then you’d better get the erotic part right. But you can’t even do that, you idiot, which is why you lose every game I can think of playing. Jennifer Beals (Alex from Flashdance!) hooks up with POWERS BOOTHE! Who is Powers Boothe? Let’s find out together, like a family.

He is the voice of this guy!

He had a role in Sin City!

And he voiced this thing!

Oh. You might have seen him in this year’s hit TV show, 24 Jack Bauer Lane – which is a show that people watch. 

 A gentleman’s career, you guys. He is probably also going to star as himself in the highly anticipated upcoming documentary Powers Boothe: ZERO REGRETS. The point is, Powers Boothe was born in 1948. No big deal. Lots of guys were born in 1948! Like, my grandpa! So, when Xinia looks like this

And Powers Boothe looks like this

then it sort of stretches this movie's "plot." I mean, he literally just walks into a bar and they STARE at each other with great STARING POWER and the sexual tension is so thick you can cut it with a fastforward button and we’re supposed to believe that this is just one of those things that happens and this is how sex works and I’m trying to set Hulu on fire with a GUN because everything is so terrible and I just don’t believe that life is like this because, actually, it’s complicated so you’ll have to take my word for it when I say that this makes Captain America look like Mr. Schindler’s List.

So anyway. She’s a cat burglar. At a bar. And she asks him to dance. And he says, “I don’t dance.” And she says, “I don’t trust a man who doesn’t dance.” And he says, “Who said you were supposed to trust me.” And I say, “I HATE YOU BOTH SO MUCH.”

So she asks what he does for a living (the lonely, single, normal conversation piece in this entire movie) and he says, “I’m a snake wrangler.” And she says something like, “oh, that’s cool.” Which is not what women say when they meet men in bars who say that they’re snake wranglers. No, my friends. They is not what they say at all.

So, they have this unbearable sexual tension. Just off the charts. So much so that she breaks into his house (certainly) and when he finds her there he’s just like, “so, you broke into my house, like a regular person would” or something like that. And she says, “do you like people or snakes better?” And he says, “depends on the day.” And I say, “WE ARE YOUR SITTING DUCKS, 2012!!!” So they have sex. Of course. Very normal. And I’d allow that (erotic thriller) except they have sex like nobody ever the history of the world has ever had sex.

Like, I don’t want to get into details about whose Powers goes into whose Beals (yuck) but I will tell you that the things they do are just not things that anyone does at all.

Gifs at Giftube.com  

Seriously. The Spree should be used as curriculum for sexual abstinence education. Because kids who see it will forever associate sex with HORRIBLE.

I know that I made a promise about watching every Hulu movie, and I am a man of my word. But, there is a hierarchy of needs here, you guys. I do not want my honeymoon night (“Gross.” “Sorry!”) to begin and end with me running, screaming from the Hotel 8 that my One True Love and I will rent. I stopped the movie during the libido-warping sex scene because I have to collect and store whatever dribbling bits of sanity are left in my mind for NEXT WEEK!

NEXT WEEK: DRAGON HUNTER

P.S. Also, because no man is an island, do me a solid and suggest some Hulu movies you find in your web browsing for me to watch, so that you don't have to. That is how this works.