(Tank Girl is on Paramount Plus for anyone interested in watching)
First off, let me say I came into this movie looking forward to all the things it was trying to be. But...it failed. It's not in the "so bad it's good" category, it's simply bad. It's a bad movie. Period. Let me explain why this movie failed so hard for me.
I like camp. The campiness fell flat. I like action. The action was un-interesting. I like non-sequiturs. The non-sequiturs only added to an already disjointed movie. I find the absurd funny. The absurdity was forced, so it didn't work. I enjoy suspending my disbelief and rooting for nonsense characters. Tank Girl herself never got past the nonsense to give me a reason to root for her.
Lori Petty does an admirable job of trying to make Tank Girl into something tangible, but the character never meshes. For me, Tank Girl's chaotic energy would come across better if it was presented more diabolically, rather than childish. The masturbation and penis jokes would actually land if they came from a character who seemed unhinged and not purely cartoonish. Her manic behavior is intended to be fun and quirky, yet dangerous, but instead it's just exhausting.
Let's talk about the action. Most of it is camera shots of Tank Girl shooting off into the distance and yelling at the sky. I'm all for that...when the dosage is right. However, that's MOST of the action in the movie. When you are constantly pulled away from seeing bad guys get mowed down, it disconnects you from the FUN of the violence. Take Robocop for example. That movie is pure art when it comes to making over the top violence fun. You are invested in the rest of the movie as soon as the board room scene happens. It brings you right in, makes you witness something brutal, gory, nonsensical...and you're left grinning ear to ear ready for the rest of the film. The only example of well-done violence in Tank Girl is when she breaks that guys neck between her legs.
Let's talk about the camp and the humor. I'm all for camp. I'm all for cheese. I like the absurd. I don't need reality in my movies. But when you're going for camp and you don't pull it off, it fails twice as hard. I think one of the most glaring examples of this failing is the "saxophone prayer" that Deetee does to honor Johnny Prophet. That was so NOT FUNNY, it stood out in a movie that was filled with moments that were supposed to be funny, but weren't. I'm 100% down for a jazzy saxophone-prayer...but do it well. The lines tried to be absurd, but they were just stupid. There's a way to do what they were trying to do, but that wasn't it.
That (generally) covers the problems I had with the movie as you saw it on screen. And you know what? Maybe you disagree. Plenty of what I described is objective, so I won't die on any of those hills because maybe we just have different tastes in humor or style. What, I think, cannot be disputed is that the structure of that movie is also horrendously bad.
If you read about Tank Girl on Wikipedia or in other articles, you'll hear plenty about studio interference, forced editing, etc. There's nothing to argue with here, because it is obvious. There are glaring continuity errors. There are parts where a substantial amount of time would have had to pass to move the story on, but suddenly we're in the next scene as though we clearly didn't just skip a ton of time. One thing that is left thoroughly unexplained is how the tank itself suddenly becomes autonomous. Did they cut a scene of Jet Girl working on the tank and giving it some type of AI? Regardless, out of nowhere, in the final raid scene, the tank is driving, shooting, and responding to Tank Girl's whistles all by itself...which would be awesome, if there was ever an in-movie explanation for this.
The thing that makes these cuts even worse is...I still found the movie too long, and it was only an hour and half. And get this, before watching the movie, I saw it's runtime and was given hope. An hour and half is the right amount for a movie like this. Let's compare two legends in the action-camp world, Mad Max: The Road Warrior and Waterworld. Mad Max, is an hour and half - perfect. Get in, do the thing, don't overstay your welcome, and call it a movie. I will re-watch that whenever. Waterworld, on the other hand, tries to be Mad Max on water...but it's 2 hours and 15 minutes. It's too much movie for what it actually is, and becomes a stale slog by the end. While I enjoyed Waterworld enough, I highly doubt I'm ever going to watch it again.
I bring those two movies up because Tank Girl manages to be the worst of both worlds. Blame writing, editing, whatever. The fact of the matter is that "Tank Girl" got chopped to pieces in the editing room and became disjointed... but still manages to feel too long. Add in non-sequitur scenes like the musical dance number at the club, and instead of rollicking along with a fun side-track, you're rolling your eyes and waiting for it to be over.
There's plenty more detail I could go into but I'll paraphrase a little here. The Rippers are like the rest of the movie...weird but not in a good way. I feel bad for Ice T, I wonder how he feels about that role. The death of Johnny Prophet, while immensely important to the Rippers, falls flat for the viewer because there's barely any mention of him prior to finding out he's dead. It's hard to care about a character when the movie spends zero time making you care. This generally applies to the Rippers as well. Deetee's death should have been sad and dramatic, instead it was shoehorned, obviously coming, and carried no emotional weight for us watching. Malcom McDowell is pretty great, but let's be real, that's a typecast role for him that he could do in his sleep. Can't give him that much credit for simply doing the thing he's known for.
I don't want to be accused of missing the overt feminism of Tank Girl, as a female anti-hero who uses sex, violence, vulgarity, etc as her means of being a badass is certainly worth celebrating. I'm all for that, and I don't want to take away from anyone who may have been inspired by the character. But what I'm saying is, all those things Tank Girl is supposed to stand for could have been done A LOT better, and I don't think it's wrong to ask for that. I'll give it credit for perhaps being ahead of it's time, or for inspiring future films and artists...but that in and of itself doesn't make it a good movie.
There's articles worth reading that go over the directors displeasure with studio interference, how the creators of the original Tank Girl comics were displeased with the movie because it's nowhere near source material, and basically how all these things interacted to give you the mess that is this movie. None of this would necessarily matter to me if the final product was enjoyable, as I can look past just about anything if I'm having fun. However, Tank Girl, simply put, fails on just about all fronts, and is not a good movie.