[Update 02/21/2021: need to redo this entire review and fix the screenshots.]PONTYPOOL is a piece of vomit. The movie starts with this dork arriving at his job as the morning DJ off in Bumfuck, Egypt (small town in Canada). So he goes On Air and it's absolute torture. There's no way in the world that anybody would ever listen to this guy and not kill themselves. Here's just a sample:
Mrs. French's cat is missing. The signs are posted all over town. "Have you seen Honey?" We've all seen the posters, but nobody has seen Honey the cat. Nobody. Until last Thursday morning, when Miss Colette Piscine swerved her car to miss Honey the cat as she drove across a bridge. Well this bridge, now slightly damaged, is a bit of a local treasure and even has its own fancy name; Pont de Flaque. Now Collette, that sounds like Culotte. That's Panty in French. And Piscine means Pool. Panty pool. Flaque also means pool in French, so Colete Piscine, in French Panty Pool, drives over the Pont de Flaque, the Pont de Pool if you will, to avoid hitting Mrs. French's cat that has been missing in Pontypool. Pontypool. Pontypool. Panty pool. Pont de Flaque. What does it mean? Well, Norman Mailer, he had an interesting theory that he used to explain the strange coincidences in the aftermath of the JFK assassination. In the wake of huge events, after them and before them, physical details they spasm for a moment; they sort of unlock and when they come back into focus they suddenly coincide in a weird way. Street names and birth dates and middle names, all kind of superfluous things appear related to each other. It's a ripple effect. So, what does it mean? Well... it means something's going to happen. Something big. But then, something's always about to happen.
Wow. Wasn't that was exiting!? No bullshit, this idiot rambles on like this like 40 minutes. It's Hell on Earth. Finally, he gets some wacky phone calls that have weird zombie outbreak sounding stuff going on, but they're stupid. Eventually, the dork figures out that the zombie virus is carried by the English language...really? So now that he's figured out what causes it, he spends the next 15 minutes scribbling notes back and forth to his producer and talking in broken French. It's horrible.
Skip it and just watch the original DAWN OF THE DEAD again instead. Even if you've already seen DOTD 25 times, the 26th time will be better than the 1st of PONTYPOOL.
