“Author” Olivia Munn’s little bon mot embedded within her new book entitled “Suck It, Wonder Woman!” is not just an attempt to gauge the attention of her fan boy following, but it’s also an inadvertent smug gesture of declaring that she’s pretty much breaking out of her geeky confines and seeking greener pastures. This is a woman whose entire fame is based around eating hot dogs dangling from strings, playing a dumb wonder woman, and engaging in a lesbian kiss. And she’s suddenly dignified and looking beyond being a geek goddess. For those of you still unaware, Olivia Munn is the one time co-host for the cable network G4’s flagship daily show “Attack of the Show,” a one hour live show that tackles everything in the internet and geek world from electronics to comic books and movies.
Munn was once a nobody who came on to the show looking to touch the hearts of all geeks and accomplished said task by pretty much doing whatever it took to win over a fan base even if it meant jumping in a large pudding pie dressed as a French maid, and killing Leia fan girls at Comic Con. Now that Olivia basically became a hot commodity thanks to her deadpan often funny delivery of jokes and pure sex appeal, Munn has shed all of her geek fan base and has shown she’ll do whatever it takes be famous. Her fan base, or what remains of it, still isn’t sure what she wants to be famous for but sure enough she wants fame. Munn became a central figure of the G4 network for a long time garnering television specials of her own, and even managed to tout much of her photo shoots and interviews on the show, which seemed to be less of a favor and more of a contract stipulation the more she strayed from series and went on to other projects.
Now that she’s taken her leave, she only appears every so often if it means promotion, pretty much like Don Henley would only sing with The Eagles again if he could play his own songs in “Hell Freezes Over.” Lately Munn, a goddess in her own mind, will do whatever it takes to be famous. Creating a dance song, starring in a sitcom, patenting her own bra, dressing in wacky costumes, starring in movies, engaging in an embarrassing stint on “The Daily Show,” and whatever else can get the job done. And like every other celebrity and pseudo-celebrity, she’s written a novel. Well, not so much written as co-wrote, and probably dictated a novel that promotes her own sense of grandeur, and brings down all of the people who helped bring her to stardom. She even makes light of a trusted family friend who died a miserable death. This woman who once dressed in skimpy costumes to grab ratings now proclaims she was forced in to doing so in interviews.
“Suck It, Wonder Woman!” reads like a poorly written blog from a petty freshman at a high school looking to spite her tormentors. The entire Introduction is based around Olivia sticking her tongue out at people who crossed her and calling them assholes. It’s basically “Look where I am! Now who’s laughing?! Nyah!” And it only gets worse from there. Deep down Olivia is a gorgeous woman in the body of a repressed, insecure, under-achieving, and utterly juvenile little girl whose own attempts at stardom are not so much based around ambition, but about being in the spotlight as much as possible just to show everyone she could do it. And that’s not a hero. That’s barely someone worthy of a center stage. If she wasn’t good looking, she’d be on Youtube in front of a grainy camera begging people to subscribe to her channel.
“Suck It, Wonder Woman!” isn’t so much a chronicle of her life or memoir as it is a handbook to the awesomeness that is Munn. There are pictures of her from her fans, fan art, pictures of herself as famous women, name dropping like nobody’s business, hints thrown around at potential opportunities that are so blatant it’s pathetic (Excerpt: “Note to agents: If you’re reading this book, you should know that you are actually resistible. And everyone can tell you have issues with your height. Your facial hair and scented candles do not distract us.”), and even looks back at her stint on “Attack of the Show,” she recalls with a patronizing tone that’s hard to ignore. Most of “Suck It Wonder Woman!” revolves around Olivia riffing on her Asian family that we’ve seen Margaret Cho do a thousand times since she started in comedy. From the accents, to the jabs at their heritage, Munn comes off as a Cho wannabe. The rest of the “memoir” reads like a god forsaken online blog (as stated in the aforementioned paragraphs) and is just damn filler that should be on a blogspot account.
At least Roger Ebert had the good sense to know not all personal stories are worthy of books. “The Sweetest Moments in Geek History! Of All Time!” is Olivia chronicling her favorite geeks for pages on end seemingly starting a comic bit for her future in stand-up (good luck), “Star Wars Can Totally Help You in Life” is another riff on Olivia’s love for “Star Wars”… answer this geeks: Is it worth the price for you as a possible conversation starter for Munn at Comic Con yet? “Random True Story #1” is about her boyfriend who wanted to suck dick. Literally. It’s all just so pointless and absolutely unfunny. I have nothing against Munn personally, because in the world of people like Heidi Montag, and Joan Rivers, she’s the lesser of those evils, but books like this only serve to add as a tool for self-promotion for someone who has probably never read a book in the last two years, while other writers out there with something to say and something to offer the literary world are still self-publishing and banging down agents doors asking for a chance. Do you really want to spend money on “chapters” like “The Ten Major Points of Olivia Munn’s 2024 Presidential Campaign Platform,” “What to Do When The Robots Invade (Yes, When!),” and just an endless string of chapters that do nothing but promote Olivia and don’t let us get inside?
And to get to the good stuff you have to trudge through about five or six chapters to get to gems like “I Did It All for the Love of Pie” which Munn recollects as her shining moment of being the hot girl who didn’t adhere to the clichés of being a hot girl thanks to her love of pie while on “Attack of the Show.” But tidbits like that are scant and few, and don’t help to reduce the time wasted on a pointless waste of paper that talks about dating zombies and includes a conversation on Twitter. Maybe somewhere deep down Olivia Munn is a sad and insecure woman who is afraid to really let loose on how she feels and what she thinks of herself. Perhaps she thinks it’s too sad or depressing to show her fans her real wounds and personal scars. Or worse, maybe she’s just nothing but a hot girl with nothing to say like every other bubble head on the internet with their own blog accounts. Either way, it’s not worth the price of this book to find out and ponder on that notion.