When you think of David Fincher’s 1999 film Fight Club, a number of words may come to mind: macho, violent, soap. Chances are, however, when you think of the Brad Pitt and Edward Norton-starring flick, the first description you think of is not adorable. Well, that may very well change after you watch this new video: G-Rated Fight Club.
This video comes from folks over at Fine Brothers Entertainment, and if you ever ventured to imagine an animated, elementary school version of Fight Club, you know, without the sex, swearing, violence, and general mayhem, this is probably pretty much what it would look like. And it’s a lot of goddamn fun.
Edward Norton’s Narrator or Jack or whatever you want to call him, is transported from the mundane life of a cubicle drone to the mundane life of a suburban 4th grader. While in a Cootie support group, he meets Marla Singer, and, just like in the original, everything goes straight to hell.
It has everything you expect, only all of it tweaked just a little bit and given a makeover so you can share the fun with your kids. There are still quick, single frame flashes of Tyler Durden, the rebellious new kid, a note asking "Do you like me" with boxes to check for yes or no, and, of course, the titular club. This time, however, instead of a straightforward Fight Club, it’s a Tickle Fight Club; much more family friendly, even with a little bit of pee. The rules, however, are still the same: number one is, you don’t talk about Tickle Fight Club, and number two (that made me laugh more than it probably should) is, you don’t talk about Tickle Fight Club.
I wonder if you still have to Tickle Fight on your first day at Tickle Fight Club? And does your mom pick you up and drop you off, or does everyone lie and say they’re going over to Billy’s house after school? I’m curious about the logistics of this.
Fight Club is one of the movies that we still talk about even 16 years later, and for good reason. Along with movies like Se7en and The Game, this really helped establish what to expect from a David Fincher film, thematically, tonally, aesthetically. Thematically dense, it dives into a variety of philosophical schools of thought, juggles traditional storytelling tropes like the unreliable narrator, and digs into the plight of people—most specifically men, there’s a noticeable dearth of female characters—numbed by the type of lifestyle pounded into your head by years of compulsory education and rampant consumerism. It’s also gleefully fascist, overly ambiguous, and offers little to nothing in the way of solutions. Basically, there’s a shit ton of stuff to dissect and discuss.
The film got a pseudo sequel earlier this year in the form of a comic book, Fight Club 2, written by Chuck Palahniuk, author of the novel the movie adapted. The action picks up ten years later when Tyler reemerges from Sebastian (the name the narrator uses now) to cause more chaos and mayhem.
