Sahara

[sasha_feather]

I watched Sahara tonight and liked it a lot. It's funny, adventurous, and I totally want to fanfic it! It has typical race and gender problems. And the two male leads-- totally hilarious, boyish, hot Navy Seals and I want to slash them like woah. OK, the sexy doctor lady is hot too.



There is a scene where the two guys are handcuffed to each other and into the bed of a pickup truck. Yeah, I thought of kink_bingo. I have a feeling I'll be collecting all sorts of fandoms for that.

Comments

[toft]

I thought Sahara was HYSTERICAL - the plot is so ridiculous! Did they *ever* explain why or how the ship/submarine/whatever went all the way over to Africa?

[sasha_feather]

Haha! No. Nor did I understand the toxin dumping plot that was supposedly going to kill the entire ocean.

But there were pretty, bantering boys! That was more than enough for me.

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

I think it does a little better than these movies typically do with gender - at least the hot doctor lady gets to shoot people, climb herself out of the well, and doesn't show her boobs, or spend half her time on the boat in a bikini. And there ALMOST wasn't a kiss between them, which is pretty surprising!

I'm glad I watched that again last night - I'd really forgotten how much I liked it. I am looking foward to Hot Navy Seal Slash. :)

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

"It didn't suck in terms of gender as much as most other movies of this type suck in terms of gender."

Amazing how low our standards are. ;)

It barely passes the Bechdel test, because Eva speaks to one village woman about the disease she is investigating. I recall no other women with speaking roles.

But! Happy bantering flirty boys-- this is party how I enjoy these movies.

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

Ah - I forgot about the Bechdel test!

Yeah, I watch and love so many of these movies that my expectations are so, so low. :(

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

Another thing I've started doing-- whether or not something fails the Bechdel test (and most things do), is to count the number of women or female characters with speaking roles vs. the number of male characters with same. It's appalling.

Which isn't to say we can't love these works. It's just-- well, it's part of the price of my heightened awareness, I guess.

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm on board with you. Just because the film was better in some ways doesn't make it any where near "good" with regards to gender. A broken clock is right twice a day, but wrong the rest of the time!

[fairestcat]

Oh, Sahara is great fun!

It bears relatively little resemblance to the book/characters it's based on, but it captures the spirit of them remarkably well.

Clive Cussler's books (on which the movie is based) are a long-time guilty pleasure of mine, and part of what I always liked about them is that, while they certainly have the gender issues inherent in that general genre of books, they're actually much better about them than on average and the female characters tend to be awesome and well rounded characters as well as love interests.

(Also, there are classic cars and planes shipwrecks and historical crack!plots and it's all ridiculous and formulaic but doesn't take itself too seriously)

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

Oh that is really good to know! antarcticlust was thinking about reading them but was wondering if they are any good.

[fairestcat]

They're standalones, so they don't have to be read in any order, I would, however, suggest not reading the very early ones first, because they are rather noticeably less good about the gender stuff.

Sahara, actually, is a really good one to start with. Also, Raise the Titanic.