James Griffin: A time-saving movie mash-up

James Griffin. Photo / Dean Purcell

School holidays. This, of course, means a whole slew of family fun films at the cinemas. This time around the slew includes the remake of the film that gave the world Kevin Bacon (and the game of the same name), Footloose; the big-screen adaptation of that televisual work of genius, The Smurfs; the second most pointless sequel ever, Johnny English Reborn; a film about robots who box (and probably also can't spell the word "awesome"), Real Steel; a re-release (with an added 3rd dimension) of The Lion King; a Taylor Lautner film (with all that entails), Abduction; and the most pointless sequel ever, Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World in 4D.

But I don't have all the time in the world, and it would be really helpful to me if, instead of having to traipse along to multiple films I don't actually want to see, there was a mash-up version, comprising all of them at once. This way, I could cut the family film fun experience down to a couple of hours.

In Lion King Johnny Smurf's Footloose Real Steal Abduction in 4D Hugh Jackman is an undercover Smurf sent to Earth to abduct Taylor Lautner and take him back to the 4th Dimension, which is where Smurfs live, in order to: (a) save the world from future Taylor Lautner films; and (b) so they may probe Taylor and experiment upon him in order to glean the secret of his amazing, rock-hard abs.

Hugh is hindered in his quest to rid the world of Taylor Lautner by two things. First, being a Smurf, he is blue. Yes, he looks like Hugh Jackman aka Wolverine aka Hugh "Australia, what the hell were you thinking?" Jackman, but he is bright blue. This is a problem because it is hard to be unobtrusive on an undercover mission when you're 6'2" and blue (and not in Avatar). The second problem Sneaky-Smurf Hugh faces is that he has a rival baddie, also looking for the secret of Taylor's abs, but to harness their power for evil, not good. This baddie comes in the form of a rubber-faced robot in the shape of Rowan Atkinson. The Rowan robot is a lethal (but accident-prone) exponent of a mime-based martial art, who flies into a rage and mime-punches people when they point out that everything he has done since Blackadder is crap.

So Aussie-Smurf Hugh and Robo-Rowan are on the trail of Taylor who, inexplicably, has gone on the run with a ubiquitous, interchangeable Hollywood starlet for company (and romantic interest and eye-candy). Taylor, however, isn't hard to track down because (for box office and career reasons) he keeps taking his shirt off.

At airports, bus stations, shopping malls, restaurants and disused factories that are a potent symbol of America's economic ruin and also great fun to blow up, all Hugh and Rowan have to do is look for the bloke with the shirt off. The manhunt ends (for cinematic and marketing reasons) in Africa; in a small town where dancing is banned but, strangely, all the kids dance all the time. When Hughverine and the Tin Bean descend upon this town they find that: (a) all the "kids" are actually far too old to be kids, but they are photogenic and awesome dancers and that is what matters; and (b) all the inhabitants of the town who aren't "kids" or their uptight dance-banning parents seem to be talking animated animals who have grown an extra dimension.

At first it looks like Broadway-Smurf Hugh will get to Taylor first because he is an awesome dancer, while the Rowanator manages to cause a rift in the Actor Time-Space Continuum by meeting himself as Zazu, the wise-cracking Southern Yellow-billed Hornbill. The Bean-pod, however, manages to solve this conundrum by killing, roasting and eating the annoying bird.

The final fight/dance-sequence takes place in a disused factory in Africa that is a potent symbol of America's global decline. The Rowan-robot fights dirty by comically bumping into things, causing Hugh to have to use his dancing feet to dodge the falling bits of factory, which instead crush; (a) Rowan; and (b) the Spy Kids who finally turn up in the film, just in time to die.

Then Taylor and Hugh bond over the fact they were both wolves in a former life and in the end it is revealed that the secret of Taylor's abs is that he is pregnant. Taylor then gives birth on Pride Rock and Mufasa holds up the baby (which, intriguingly, has Robert Pattinson's eyebrows) to the expectant crowd as Elton John and Kenny Loggins duet on The Circle of Footloose. The end.

Works for me.