Have you seen the movie, *Soylent Green* ? **SPOILER ALERTS***

So after reading through the “only eating Soylent” thread yesterday, I decided to actually go watch the movie “Soylent Green”.

I assume this movie was probably a half-way decent book, originally. So, what do you do with a decent book? Adapt it to film, of course. The problem is that most dialogue and inner thoughts never work in film form. It takes a good writer or a team of writers to make it work. The acting needs to be top notch too. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it was never a book. I’m too lazy to scroll over 4 inches and search.

After a search online, I found a pirate site that had it available. I clicked play and watched it.

After the slow start, and the monotonous story line droned on for an hour, I was ready to just turn it off. I mean, I know he’s a detective and he’s investigating a murder, and it can’t all be action-packed all the time, but the most interesting point of the film is that he is in a relationship with an escort. I’m not sure how that happened though. She’s the murder victim’s live-in escort. I mean, she’s an escort, but the transition from witness in a murder investigation to lover was very odd. One minute, he’s asking her questions about the murder, and the next, he’s stripping down for bed time ? Maybe there was some dialogue when I wasn’t watching and I missed it, but he basically went straight from questioning her about the murder to getting ready for bed and settling down for the night like they’d been married for 10 years – where the fuck did that relationship come from?

I kept on trucking. Maybe it’ll get better? Right? … guys?

So, his best friend and roommate checks into a facility that euthanizes people, apparently anyway. I thought he was going to a hospital. that’s what it looked like. The entire scene was confusing and left me wondering what the fuck was going on. There was no real explanation as to what was happening until ol’ detective shows up and threatens the orderly with bodily harm. A conversation follows but you can’t hear what’s being said for the most part. The only part you can really hear is “you have to tell them” or something along those lines.

So, that at least piqued my interest. “Oh, what’s that!? A conspiracy!??Well, maybe this film will pay off afterall!” The detective follows his friend’s corpse to the basement where it’s loaded into a garbage truck. He climbs on and sneaks into a processing center that turns out to be Soylent, where his friend and other corpses are being processed as food. A chase ensues and shots are fired, lots of innocents being shot in the back and bullets flying. He kills the main bad guy (typical for the that time in film) and is most likely mortally wounded. The police chief comes in and he tells him “Soylent is people! They need to know!”

Oh man, now the film has some merit. What’s next!?

The end.

Like a 70s porn, it was boom goes the dynamite and fade to black.

I’ve seen a lot of movies. I have watched a lot of independent and low budget films. I’ve spent the past 8 years watching movies and TV shows while I work. I’ve suffered through some horrible movies, but Soylent Green is among the worst.

Why is it so popular? Was it because of Charlton Heston? Was it a successful book that gave the movie illegitimate merit? Either way, don’t bother – unless you’re into awful movies. I’ve seen better acting in Youtube spoofs, but then again, Italian Spiderman was amazing!

have you seen it? What did you think?