Ow! Napalm stings!

[This is it. This one will either hook you forever - or make you immediately delete this blog from your RSS feed.]

Platoon as a highly unlikely romantic comedy, starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant

Scene 1

Julia Roberts is a new recruit on her first tour of duty in Vietnam. Her commanding officer (Hugh Grant) is a hard-bitten yet curiously attractive British officer. The other officer in the platoon is a Neanderthal and, inexplicably, her former fiancé. Through harrowing and brutal field work, Hugh Grant seems to take a peculiar delight in making her life a living hell. Why? She talks it over with her buddy (Cuba Gooding Jr.) while learning to fight every bit as well as a man, in order to prove herself.

Scene 2

One night, when Hugh Grant is away from camp, Julia Robert’s ex-fiancé leads a guerrilla raid on a village. Suddenly, Gooks ambush the platoon. The battle turns ugly. Julia Roberts goes to torch a hut, but when she opens her lighter, she burns her hand! Ouch! The world goes all swimmy before her eyes.

Hugh Grant arrives and rushes to her aid. He carries her limp, lithe body deep into the jungle, where he tenderly ministers to her injuries. Though the gunfire and flames of a pointless war rage all around them, they share a wistful conversation about what they miss most about home. Julia Roberts longs for her favorite meal – a cheeseburger and fries with Tabasco sauce. They stare into each other’s eyes and twitch a lot to the somber strains of Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”.

Scene 3

Cuba Gooding Jr. and the other grunts in Julia Roberts’ platoon warn her that their Commanding Officer probably suffers from combat fatigue, and that he’ll only break her heart. Hugh Grant’s fellow officers advise him not to get serious about a lowly noncom. They both resolve to break it off.

Scene 4

During a particularly intense battle, a grenade goes off in a field, and Hugh Grant is seriously wounded. Julia Roberts rushes to his side. “Medic!” she shrieks.

“It’s no good,” Hugh Grant bares his dreadful orthodontia in a manly way. “Go on without me.”

“No, Sir, I won’t leave you!” she sobs.

“You must!” he growls."That's an order, Private!"

Another grenade goes off, and she is knocked out. She wakes to find herself on a stretcher, flying in a helicoptor, about to be med-evac’d out. She looks down – she sees she has lost a leg. Ow! But worse, Hugh Grant is not on the chopper with her. She peers out the helicopter at the sea of jungle green below. Did he make it out alive? Will she ever know? She fights back the tears. “Damn this war,” she whispers.

Scene 5

In the airport back Stateside, Julia Roberts, Cuba Gooding Jr. and others from her platoon painfully make their way off the plane. The crowd spits on them in derision. Luckily for Julia, a miraculous medical breakthrough has allowed her to be given a bionic leg. In fact, you can’t tell she was ever hurt, though she uses a cute cane and winces for a while.

Suddenly she hears a familiar voice behind her. She turns, eager. Could it be Hugh … ? No, it’s not. She is terribly disappointed. This happens about four or five more times until it begins to look like a case of PTSD.

Scene 6

A month later, Julia Roberts is back in her Appalachian hometown. One night, the ex-fiancé shows up at her trailer, drunk and belligerent. He starts to assault her. She knocks him to the ground, garrotes him with professional detachment, and buries his body deep in the woods. He is never seen again.

Scene 7

A week later, she walks to the local diner. Morosely, she sits at the counter to order lunch. “Adagio for Strings” begins to play on the jukebox.

Suddenly, a cultured British voice asks, “Will that be a cheeseburger and fries with Tabasco sauce?” She gasps and looks up. It is Hugh Grant! Disguised as a fry cook!

They have a touching scene where they confess their deep love for each other. Julia Roberts climbs on the counter. Hugh Grant clumsily joins her – that’s when she sees he has lost an arm and a leg.

“Can you love a - a cripple?” he asks.

“I’m just a girl, sitting on a counter in front of a boy, asking him to love her,” she declares. Then she grins. “Besides, a know a doctor who does great bionics.”

They kiss. The townspeople spontaneously clap and wave little American flags.

~ THE END ~