by ELMORE TERADONOVICH, Alternate Reality News Service Film Writer
Tamagotchi ParkA group of nine perfectly preserved Tamagotchis is discovered in a garbage dump outside of Chichester, Ontario. Techno-archaeologists drool. By extracting the code from the dead playthings, they hope to revive the fad that strode the world colossusly in the distant digital past - 2006.
Nineteen years later, Tamagotchi Park is ready to open. It is a wilderness park set on a conveniently remote island in the Ural Sea that allows Tamagotchis to wander free as they did in their prime. A family of four (Neil Samms, Laurie Dorn and two achingly adorable child actors you'll probably never hear of again) stumbles on the island on a hiking tour of Paris.
Unbeknownst to the avuncular (literally: in the manner of your bird-like uncle) billionaire owner of the combination resort/theme park/crossbow academy, the Tamagotchi programming mutated in the process of its revival, allowing the cute and cuddly creatures to band together to form fearsome beasts. And, they remember the indifference with which most of their human owners treated them, allowing them to die repeatedly out of cruelty, neglect or auto-erotic depixelation.
And, they are pissed.
Director Stefan Spielborg, the master of adorable child actors in peril movies, puts his adorable child actors in constant peril. Big surprise there. They manage to survive to the end of the film, shaken but ultimately wiser for their experience. Big surprise there, too. About the only non-ironic surprise in the film happens when a lawyer, reading Alternate Reality Ain't What it Used To Be on the advice of Charles de Lint while minding his own business in an outhouse, is swarmed and killed by wild Tamagotchis.
Say what you will about his films, but Spielborg really knows how to give his audience what it wants.
He is also the master of special effects: the film's recreations of what computer scientists believe Tamagotchis were actually like - a combination of CGI and puppetry - were highly credible. In fact, the creatures were more believable than the human beings. In the scene where the children are threatened by a swarm of Tamagotchis in an ice cream parlour, the audience at the screening I attended rooted for the silicone menace.
Of course, the audience could just have been filled with sleep-deprived, disgruntled parents.
Acting is somewhat beside the point in a Stefan Spielborg film, but people who go to his movies expect to read something about it in reviews, so let me just say that the leads were arboreally cellulose fibrous. Which, I suppose, means you could eat them if you were lost in the jungle wilds of Lower Manhattan, but given their minimal nutritional value and overall woody taste and texture, you probably wouldn't enjoy it.
Scientists are divided over whether or not reviving the Tamagotchi craze is possible. "Of course it is," enthused astronomy and freelance eyelash extractionist Neil Degrasse-Haigh. "All it takes is a massive infusion of publicity and about 30 cents worth of electronics!"
"Of course it isn't," responded Alfie Itzinger, Johnny Rotten Chair of Molecular Decay Sciences at the University of Wallamaloo, China. "The Tamagotchi died out for a reason - it clearly wasn't fit to survive in a rapiddly [literally: very small changes that follow one another very quickly] changing environment. Introduce it into today's ecosystem of Angry Alsatians and WII Fit to be Tied and it would quickly starve to death from lack of attention!"
Degrasse-Haigh argued that in the controlled conditions depicted in the film, Tamagotchis could thrive. Itzinger suggested that he should spend less time on The Daily Show and more time studying the evolution of consumer electronics fads. Degrasse-Haigh countered that Itzinger was just jealous that his research on chemical reactions at the bottom of landfill sites couldn't even get him a spot on TV's Most Disgusting Messes. Itzinger shouted something about "you take that back or you'll be sorry!" Degrasse-Haigh responded that if Itzinger fought as well as he researched, a fair fight between them wouldn't last very long. Itzinger replied with the time-honoured scientific riposte, "Oh, yeah!"
What ensued was a very unscientific melee, undiminished by the fact that the two men had been interviewed at two different times in two different places by two different journalists.
Tamagotchi Park explores the theme of scientific hubris: should we recreate an ancient entertainment fad when the culture has moved on just because we can? "Some things man was never meant to know," Patandfurrow's character intones. "But, where would the fun in not knowing be?"