Awesomely Bad: Gymkata

The year is 1985 and the world needs a hero, a gymnastics hero. There's valuable land in the tiny, non-existent, country of Parmistan, which is run by a guy that looks like a body double for Mel Brooks, that the U.S. government wants to build a Star Wars defense system base on. The only way to secure that land is to win "The Game", a deadly survival course that no foreigner, including our hero's father, has ever won. Enter champion gymnast John Cabot who, with a rare and deadly blend of gymnastic and ninja skills known as gymkata and a sweet mullet, will make the dangerous trip to Parmistan, win The Game, and make the world a better place...somehow. And that's how the action-fest known as Gymkata starts.


There was a lot of hype for me as I went into the movie. I had seen it on Maxim's 50 Worst Movies of All Time list, and with it earning an admirable #17 on the list I was really expecting some world-class cheese. However, nearly an hour into the movie and it was really only kinda boring. It didn't seem to be the kind of movie that gets a Worst nod from anyone, and then it happened. The Game started and things started getting weird. Things like a 3 minute slow motion scene, which was in slow-mo for absolutely no damn reason, of our hero John Cabot running away from a town full of insane transvestite cannibals. Or how about an absolutely awesome scene in the center of crazy town where there JUST HAPPENS to be an ancient stone pommel horse in which our Gymkata Master hops on to aid in his masterful ass kicking. The movie finally started living up to it's full, awful potential. I'm not sure I would ever add this movie to my personal Worst Ever list, because honestly it's not that bad, but it is awesomely bad. Awesomely bad enough to garner enough cult following to win a Warner Bros./Amazon poll back in 2006 where Gymkata won the right to finally be released on DVD.

It's really sad that this movie was Kurt Thomas', playing the role of John Cabot, only foray into the acting world. It seems to fit his bad luck though, as he was a world champion gold medalist but never got to be in the Olympics because President Carter boycotted the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics where Thomas was supposed to represent the US on the gymnastics team. Equally sad was that fact that 12 years later in 1992 he completely failed to make the Olympic team when he tried to stage a comeback. Another sad surprise is that this mediocre movie is directed by the same man who did the classic kung-fu movies Enter the Dragon and Game of Death, Robert Clouse. And lets just top it off with another surprise, this is actually based on a novel called The Terrible Game. Obviously the book wasn't that great either because I can find absolutely nothing on the book other than a few used book auctions.

And now I should quickly introduce the Awesomely Bad rating system before I give my final verdict. The rating basically breaks down into an "out of 5" scale.
1/5 - which means this is just the bad kind of bad. There's no awesome in sight.
2/5 - it's got some cheese, probably had potential for greatness, but ends up being just a mediocre movie.
3/5 - Now we're starting to get somewhere. A movie of this caliber starts to show real camp and cheese, but doesn't quite make it.
4/5 - The cheese is starting to get a bit gooey, the laughs are coming more from inadequacy than one-liners. There's no shame in being a 4.
5/5 = The Cheese de la Cheese, the Awesomely Bad King of the Moment, a true gem and work of art.

Final Verdict: While Gymkata does pack in a lot of cheese in the last half of the movie, you have to get through a lot of boring and uninteresting setup before you get to any pay dirt, and it just doesn't seem like the payoff is worth the windup. So I give Gymkata a 3/5 - its got the cheese, but just not enough.