Crossworlds (1996)
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(Foreign Titles)
Nomination Year: 2014
SYNOPSIS: Joseph is a college student, despite looking about 30. He's also a loser. We know this because: he goes by "Joseph" rather than "Joe," he's a business major despite the fact that his mother wants him to be an art major, he actually does his schoolwork, his father died under mysterious circumstances when he was a kid, and he's upset because his girlfriend dumped him. When his friends (Jack Black and some other guy who didn't become famous later, probably because he was already so close to retirement age) urge him to try picking up a skeevy girl at a party, he gets shot down in flames, with the girl suggesting that if Jack had asked her out, she'd have said "yes."
Dejected at the idea that he's less desirable than Jack Black, Joe goes home, only to be woken up in the middle of the night by a Hot Chick standing over his bed. Unfortunately, what she's trying to do is cut off the necklace that he always wears, the one thing he has of his father's. He objects, but before this can go anywhere, his window explodes. He tries to flee, but his door leads to a desert complete with charging nomad. Hot Chick does a very lame "come with me if you want to live" thing and they flee in Joseph's loser car, which gets shot up by some random machinegun-toting baddies. Hot Chick takes them to a cheap motel and leads him to a room where they... find an extra-dimensional workshop complete with Rutger Hauer.
Hot Chick and Rutger are from a parallel world that has been taken over by some generic villains who want to rule all the worlds. To do this, though, they need to break down the walls between universes, which can only be done using the Staff of Something-or-Other and it's Control Crystal. Hot Chick is a resistance fighter who was sent by her Queen to this universe to run around in boots and a miniskirt recover the staff and crystal. The staff is still missing, but guess what Joseph's necklace is? Rutger, meanwhile is a disgruntled ex-resistance fighter who has retired to his pocket dimension to weld. He wants no part of this mission because he thinks it's really stupid, possibly because it is. Hot Chick gets him to come along, anyway, by convincing the writers to ignore motivation and character consistency.
They immediately find the staff and are attacked by villains who have been waiting years for some idiot resistance fighter to lead them right to it to find it. There's a fight, made more difficult by the fact that the villains can go out of phase whenever you try to punch them, then phase in to punch you back. The heroes get away with the crystal, the villains get away with the staff.
And then all the Adventure Movie stuff happens: there's a lame car chase, Joseph whines, Rutger cracks wise, the crystal and staff get traded back and forth a few times, Joseph gets bored and quits only to go home and get arrested for killing one of the villains who we didn't actually notice had even been killed, Joseph gets bailed out by his mother, Joseph finds out Hot Chick has been captured and teams up with Rutger to rescue her, a history between Rutger and the main villain is implied but never explored, Joseph gets captured and flirts with Hot Chick in jail, everybody gets rescued but it all seems too easy, it was too easy but they escape the trap that was laid for them, that turns out to have also been too easy and Rutger has to sacrifice himself to save the others, Hot Chick turns out to have been freelancing and not following the Queen's orders at all, Dad turns out to have been the last wielder of the staff and died protecting it, Mom turns out to have known everything the whole time but never told Joseph because she thought he was too much of a pussy to follow in his father's footsteps, Joseph and Hot Chick try to flee back to her world but are ambushed by the villain, Rutger reappears just in time to save them, and Joseph finally says, "Call me Joe," defeats the villain, reassembles the staff, and contacts the resistance.
At this point, the writers realize that they had no idea where they were going and we discover that reassembling the staff doesn't actually accomplish anything -- as an artifact, it was only useful for the villains. Defeating the villain didn't accomplish anything, either; he was just a local commander, not any kind of major leader. The rebellion continues, nothing is won, all that's been done is avoiding the major disaster that Hot Chick almost brought on. The Queen is mildly miffed at her freelancing, but commends her on a job well done, since everything turned out okay in the end. A past between Rutger and the Queen is hinted at and he rejoins the rebellion. Joe joins up, too, and he and Hot Chick are posted back to Earth where he can continue his studies during their downtime and they can make Jack jealous by making out in front of him, eventually pissing him off enough to go make School of Rock and become a millionaire.
Greg Pearson
