Billed as a ‘nonsequel’ to the director’s 1984 classic Repo Man – in case anyone gets the wrong idea and more about that later – irreverent veteran helmer Alex Cox (Sid & Nancy, Straight To Hell, Repo Man) has described this latest oddity as ‘entirely a freestanding film about a very wealthy young woman who finds meaning stealing from the middle class and the poor.’ Or perhaps more precisely, Repo Man with plenty of babes and bling, and yet another entry into that evolving genre of Recession Cinema.
Enter Jaclyn Jonet as Pixxie De La Chasse, she’s a famous for being infamous rude and rebellious LA heiress and party animal who finds herself cut off from her patrician family’s cash flow for various unacceptable infractions. Including repeated arrests for driving without a license, and having unprotected sex with boy backup dancers.
The grumpy dynasty, presided over by among others, a weathered Karen Black as Aunt De la Chasse, extends to Pixxie a stipulation that she can regain her allowance. But only if she finds employment, despite the fact that she peddles her own line of glow in the dark thongs and lends her name to perfumes.
But with more traditional employment prospects limited due to a country deep into a recession, where the only nonmilitary growth industries seems to be ‘repossession and corrections,’ Pixxie and her peculiar entourage pals are driven into a deep funk. That is, until a repo company drives off with her dazzling pink designer car, for nonpayments.
After tracking down the company, Pixxie signs on as the repo chick of the title in order to retrieve her vehicle, and is assigned lot duty with a jaded junkyard maven played by Rosanna Arquette. But she’s delighted to discover her basic instinct calling in the profession, owing to her untapped ruthless tendencies towards the lower classses. And in a burgeoning business expanding beyond cars, to repossess everything from ‘homes to nations.’
Repo Chick, which counts among its producers David Lynch, tries much too hard to make its point despite nifty miniature train special effects, with an overload of ideas that constantly threaten to tip serious satirical themes into just plain trivialized silliness. Including a possibly fictitious, elusive vintage caboose with a big bucks repo award in store, and anti-golf train terrorists cornering VIP hostages. Among them Sid & Nancy’s Chloe Webb as an incoherent talkaholic on board, and sporting the strangest gravity defying hair on the planet.
Though it seems that the anti-capitalist drift targeting golf culture may not be so far fetched after all. Coincidentally enough in the real world, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has denounced golf courses as the stuff of bourgeois decadence, and intends to shut them down and replace the land with parks and public housing.
There’s also a scandalous off-camera episode itself worthy of inclusion in this extreme storytelling. Universal Studios, which owns the rights to Repo Man and any future sequels, apparently balked at Cox filming Repo Chick without their permission. So to run confusion and interference on his distribution, they deliberately renamed their own upcoming film back then, Repossession Mambo. Into what became the Jude Law anti-medical establishment futuristic beatdown, Repo Men.
Industrial Entertainment Unrated 2 1/2 stars
