By Kathryn Marshall Don't tell anyone, but in my dark and solitary moments I sometimes think how great it would be to blast through life insulting everyone, invariably male, who got in my way.
It wouldn't be too bad to feel you could sleep with anyone (or any living creature, come to that) so long as they took your fancy without even the merest twinge of a sexual hang-up.
In Hewlett and Martin's cartoon this woman has such a fantastic time of it — saving the world and verbally abusing and physically obliterating power-hungry scum is all in a day's work for her.
She is free from all the constraints that trap us and, although it's not exactly practical to be her, we can all have our moments of fantasy, can't we?
How was such a trailblazer going to fit into a Hollywood box when the whole point about her is that she didn't fit into any boxes? Hollywood's answer is to change her.
The film opens with an animated sequence of the original cartoons with a loud and proud song "Girls U Want". Then it cuts to actress Lori Petty, Hollywood's Tank Girl.
It is hard as a mere human being to pack the kind of energy into your character that a cartoonist can convey with deft touches with a pen or speech bubble with "POW!" written in it. Petty does very well on the energy scale.
As Sight and Sound mentions, Tank Girl would never have had Petty's plucked eyebrows, but the point is that she would have done what she damn well liked.
However, the person who gave our heroine a cutesy, squeaky drawl has a lot of explaining to do.
After two hours of listening to this voice most closely resembing the candyfloss Frenchie, Grease's Beauty School Drop-Out, you really want the real" Tank Girl to step up and deal with her.
In the film she is also given a daughter. Are your •Women must-be-goodmothers' alarm bells ringing yet? She is also placed inside Mind you, she does give a community who band tolessons to the effect that gether against the evil boss 'arse-lick' is a worse term of of 'Water and Power'. Tank abuse than 'bum-wipe'. But Girl has a very positive role what with a child in tow and in it, but essentially she is the yucky voice, the whole just one amongst many -thing does seem too cosy her sharp edge is blunted. and sweet. This film clearly has a All this cuteness alters pretty progressive plot-line. her image. She loses her de- The idea that those in power fining quality as a com- are squeezing everything pletely independent woman from us and that we have to who can make it alone. The fight back is central. This director gives her a physical has got to be good. coyness absent from the car- But Hollywood runs toons-and even has her es- scared of showing us a cape from the lecherous woman free to be totally inclutches of a guard by dependent and assertive. Permeans of a kiss. Sacrilege! haps this a fantasy too far.