Fast and Furious 6

Fast and Furious 6 - Dir. Justin Lin (2013)

Fast five…furious six.

Who would have thought that the Fast and Furious franchise would still be going strong over a decade later? Probably not anyone who has seen the early films. The Fast and the Furious was a rough looking B-movie directed by schlockmaster Rob Cohen with a story lifted right out of Point Break, just with cars instead of surfboards. 2 Fast 2 Furious was a mind-numbing take on the buddy action pic that was at least benefited from the gorgeous Miami setting and slick direction by John Singleton. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift was a threequel that should have gone straight to video as it featured none of the original actors though Vin Diesel made a brief cameo. What saves Tokyo Drift from the scrapheap were some cool racing sequences, the introduction of Sung Kang as the laid back Han, and Justin Lin stepping behind the wheel to steer the series forward.

Fast and Furious was a fresh start, doing away with the articles and subtitles as it transitioned the franchise from the subculture of street racing to thunderous action. Fast Five was essentially The Avengers on four wheels, culling together an all-star team of past characters and reveling in widescreen vehicular mayhem. Good to know that Furious 6 is more of the same.

When last we left them, Dominic Toretto (Diesel) and his cohorts were living the high life after stealing millions of dollars from a Brazilian drug lord. Not exactly hiding his newfound wealth, Toretto is easily found by federal agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), who recruits his band of racers to bring down a new gang led by a former Special Forces operative named Owen Shaw (Luke Evans). One of Shaw's henchmen just happens to be Toretto's previously dead girlfriend Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez), now suffering from amnesia. Shaw has cut a path of destruction across Europe in an attempt to steal the parts to build an electromagnetic weapon that can disable a country's entire defense network.

Furious 6 features a loaded ensemble and the movie doesn't give everybody a fair share of the spotlight. Jordana Brewster's Mia Toretto, for example, is pushed off to the side. Meanwhile, the charisma of Dwayne Johnson and the braggadocio of Tyrese Gibson more than offset the monotone growling of Vin Diesel and the bland Paul Walker. Screenwriter Chris Morgan, who has been at Lin's side since Tokyo Drift, doesn't write the snappiest banter, but the chemistry of the principal cast make it work. In regards to the new characters, Luke Evans doesn't make much of an impression as the villain, mostly because there isn't a lot on the page aside from his quest for a MacGuffin device. Gina Carano is a welcome addition though she's only there for a pair of knockdown, drag-out catfights with Michelle Rodriguez. Also thrown into the mix is Joe Taslim from The Raid: Redemption who gets into a wicked brawl with Gibson, Kang and a handful of hapless Bobbies in the London subway.

Despite some fun fisticuffs, the driving sequences don't match up to Fast Five, especially the climactic carnage through the streets of Rio. After a lengthy opening section in which the band gets back together, Lin finally gets loose with a London chase. There's some cool stuff such as the use of a modified formula-1 racer with a ramp that flips oncoming cars. However, most of the action is lost in the frenetic camerawork and the dark nighttime setting. The same problems occur at the conclusion during a wild set piece in which our heroes race alongside a massive cargo plane on what must have been the longest runway in the world. The pursuit is broken up into several smaller battles, which have been energetically edited together. The best sequence happens to be when Shaw hijacks a tank and callously crushes innocent bystanders on the highway.

Fast and Furious 6 is everything you want from an overblown summer blockbuster. The engines roar at ear-splitting decibels as the g-forces push against you until your brain cells turn to mush. There's some apprehension about Fast and Furious 7 since Universal fast-tracked (no pun intended) for next summer leading to the departure of Justin Lin and the arrival of James Wan (Saw, Insidious). However, the post-credit sequence effectively teases that we will be in for quite a ride.

P.S. – Kudos go to Morgan and Lin for their architecture of the series mythology. Either through meticulous planning or just last-minute retcons, they've managed to cast Tokyo Drift, arguably the worst of the franchise, into a new intriguing light.

Rating: *** (*****)

Pain & Gain

Pain & Gain - Dir. Michael Bay (2013)

I'm not sure what's more unbelievable about Pain & Gain, the true life story upon which it was based or the fact that this was Michael Bay's idea of a low-budget indie movie.

Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) has a great body, but not a lot of brains to go with his delusional view of the American dream or his staunch sense of entitlement. After doing time for a Ponzi scheme, Lugo goes to work as a personal trainer at the Sun Gym in Miami. Formerly a rundown spot for old folks, Lugo turns it into a haven for the built and beautiful. However, he's not satisfied and spots a big, fat payday in his obnoxious client Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub). Kershaw openly brags about his wealth, his offshore accounts, and the Schlotzsky's Deli he owns at the airport. Lugo hits on the idea to kidnap Kershaw and hold him hostage until he signs over all his assets. This ersatz mastermind recruits his best pal Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie), a fellow bodybuilder who has been rendered impotent by steroid abuse, and Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson), an ex-con who has traded his coke habit for Jesus. After several bumbling attempts, the muscle-bound trio snatches Kershaw and tortures him for nearly a month inside a warehouse full of sex toys. Lugo and his crew are able to enjoy their ill-gotten gains primarily because Kershaw is such a prick that the police have a hard time believing or sympathizing with him. When Doorbal and Doyle blow their newfound wealth on penile injections and cocaine, Lugo is forced to abduct a new mark with disastrous consequences.

Pain & Gain is unmistakably a Michael Bay film even without the widescreen mayhem and deafening explosions. His garish aesthetics are simpatico with the bizarre, true-life events adapted for the screen by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (Captain America, Chronicles of Narnia). For once, it actually makes sense for Bay to populate the backgrounds with buxom babes since the story involves strippers galore. The saturated orange and teal color palette accentuates the sun soaked paradise of Miami. The camera whips along at a frenzied pace with super slow motion employed to great effect during a SWAT team raid. When Doyle barbecues a pair of dismembered hands to destroy fingerprints, an intertitle is stamped onto the screen to remind you that this is still based on fact. The question remains: is Bay just doing what comes natural or has he developed a sense of awareness that allows him to lampoon his own style?

As Bay flirts with the notion of self-parody, he walks a thin line between glorifying and condemning the actions of his characters. There's no doubt that these men aren't the least bit sympathetic, not to mention aggressively stupid. The fact that their brutality was played for laughs has upset the real victims of the Sun Gym Gang. The dark humor eschews closely to the works of Guy Ritchie or the Crank films. Stomachs may turn when chainsaws are broken out to chop up corpses or when a severed toe comes into play.

The cast really sinks their teeth into their respective roles with Mark Wahlberg excelling as the archetypal meathead. His Daniel Lugo is definitely cut from the same cloth as Dirk Diggler with a more sinister side. Tony Shalhoub brings Victor Kershaw to odious life while Rebel Wilson, Michael Rispoli, and Peter Stormare fill out the colorful supporting cast. Ken Jeong is thankfully utilized in small doses as a motivational speaker ("Be a do'er, not a don't'er") that inspires Lugo.  Ed Harris portrays the straight man as a retired cop turned private investigator. He essentially takes on the Tommy Lee Jones role in No Country for Old Men as the one good man in an insane world. The best performance in Pain & Gain belongs to Dwayne Johnson, who bulked up to bigger proportions than he ever had in his WWE career. There's a naiveté initially displayed by Johnson that makes Doyle a gentle giant, then shows deft comedic timing when he reverts into a desperate coke head.

Pain & Gain is easily Michael Bay's best picture, which may be a backhanded compliment when his filmography includes Bad Boys 2 and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Rating: *** (*****)

G.I. Joe: Retaliation

G.I. Joe: Retaliation - Dir. Jon M. Chu (2013)

Any self-respecting child of the 80's who had the misfortune to catch G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, couldn't help but leave the theater with a foul taste in their mouth. Paramount's clumsy attempt at turning Hasbro's famed toy line into a live-action franchise played fast and loose with the mythology as it careened through a nonsensical plot riddled with idiotic dialogue. Rise of Cobra earned a little over $300 million worldwide, just barely turning a profit on its exorbitant $175 million budget. It was still enough to greenlight a sequel with the studio taking much of the criticism to heart. G.I. Joe: Retaliation serves as not only a sequel, but something of a reboot and catch-all apologia.

This time around, the Joe team consists of Duke (Channing Tatum), Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson), Flint (D.J. Cotrona), and Lady Jaye (Adrianne Palicki). After retrieving a nuclear warhead stolen from Pakistan, the Joes are the victim of an airstrike that kills the majority of the team, including Duke. The attack was ordered by the President (Jonathan Pryce), who is actually Zartan (Arnold Vosloo) in disguise. Zartan proceeds to turn the country against the Joes and orchestrates the escape of Cobra Commander from a high-tech underground prison with the help of Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) and Cobra saboteur Firefly (Ray Stevenson). With the enemy now in the White House, Roadblock, Flint, and Lady Jaye seek the aid of the original Joe, General Joe Colton (Bruce Willis) to expose Cobra's Machiavellian plot. Meanwhile, Snake-Eyes (Ray Park) and his protégé Jinx (Elodie Yung) are dispatched to the Himalayas to hunt down Storm Shadow for the murder of their master.

Stephen Sommers and his brand of bland blockbuster filmmaking are gone. In his stead, Paramount has gone for an improbable choice in Jon M. Chu whose previous credits include Step Up 2: The Streets, Step Up 3D and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never as well as the Microsoft Surface commercials. His experience with directing elaborately choreographed sequences serve Chu well when it comes to Retaliation's numerous action scenes. By far, the best set piece where Snake-Eyes and Jinx clash swords with a cadre of red ninjas while swinging around snow-capped mountainsides. It feels like an entirely separate film within the film. Most of the other scenes involving shootouts or fistfights suffer from hyperactive camerawork. The Himalayan sequence is also the only section that benefits of the 3D post-conversion that shelved the picture from its original release date in August 2012. Despite rampant rumor mongering, Retaliation did not go through any extensive reshoots.

Another aspect Chu brings is a genuine love of the property to the point he used action figures to storyboard the action. The screenplay by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (Zombieland and unproduced scripts for Deadpool and Venom) inject the sequel with more humor and faithfulness than its predecessor. The story skews much closer to the Marvel comics by Larry Hama, including an homage to the iconic "Silent Interlude" in issue #21. The Joes are more grounded as a Special Forces branch of the military rather than the cartoonish global peacekeeping force from Rise of Cobra. The vehicles in the film resemble the toys you might have collected, such as the HISS Tank, the AWE Striker, and the Water Moccasin. Cobra Commander has ditched the god-awful plastic mask for his classic chrome faceplate. Roadblock being a former chef and a hint of romance between Flint and Lady Jaye are thrown in for the die-hard fans.

While the story gains in reverence to the source material, it completely lacks in substance and coherence. The plot unfurls at lightning speed through the 90 minute runtime with no gravitas to any of the film's major moments. The convoluted backstory between Storm Shadow and Snake-Eyes is shoehorned into the standard Cobra threatens to blow up the world scheme. The entire city of London is destroyed with little bearing because we are ripped away to the next scene. At one point, Storm Shadow is imprisoned and the guards bafflingly bring along his swords, then leave them right out in the open. Nearly everyone from Rise of Cobra has been ditched with no mention at all to their fates. They aren't missed with the exception of Rachel Nichols as Scarlett. However, her role is supplanted by Adrianne Palicki's Lady Jaye though there is little done to differentiate the two. Developing fully dimensional characters is hardly a priority. It's clear a lot of that stuff was cut out during the hiatus.

Only Roadblock makes an impression thanks to the charisma of Dwayne Johnson, who has become the go-to guy to resurrect flailing franchises. Besides already looking like an action figure brought to life, Johnson has an easygoing charm that meshes well with the surprisingly funny Channing Tatum. The repartee between Roadblock and Duke are some of the most entertaining in the movie, which suffers following Tatum's departure. However, you can't blame Tatum for wanting to move on to bigger and better things now that he's starring in Steven Soderbergh productions. Jonathan Pryce, one of the few actors to return, gets a much meatier role with a dual performance as the disheveled president and the villainous Zartan. Pryce is clearly relishing the deliciously evil one-liners given to him ("They call it waterboarding, but I never get bored."). The same goes for Ray Stevenson and Walt Goggins as a somewhat sadistic warden. Don't expect to see the lively Bruce Willis seen in Moonrise Kingdom or Looper. As Gen. Colton, Willis can hardly muster up an emotion aside from mild bemusement. RZA wins the award for worst performance due to his wooden turn as the Blind Master.

Paramount still doesn't hit the mark the second time around. G.I. Joe: Retaliation won't be mistaken for high art, but the sequel accomplishes its modest goal of being mindless entertainment.

Rating: ** (*****)

Snitch

Snitch - Dir. Ric Roman Waugh (2013)

With his 6'5 frame, burly physique, and boundless charisma, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was destined to grow too large for WWE rings. He's succeeded where other wrestlers (Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin) couldn't with a willingness to expand beyond the obvious action roles he was born to play. Johnson turns in a rare dramatic performance in Snitch, a movie inspired by a 1999 episode of Frontline that weighed in on the pros and cons of mandatory minimum sentencing for drug dealers.

John Matthews (Johnson) runs a successful construction company and lives in a luxurious McMansion with his second wife (Nadine Velazquez) and daughter. His ex (Melina Kanakaredes) and estranged son, Jason (Rafi Gavron), live with modest means. Jason foolishly accepts a package of ecstasy sent by his best friend, not realizing that it is being tracked by the DEA. Jason's pal has narced on him to get out of serving a mandatory ten years in prison for drug distribution. Jason is given the same deal, except he's not involved in the drug trade whatsoever. He has no one to inform on and no desire to entrap his friends. At the mercy of Joanne Keeghan (Susan Sarandon), an ambitious prosecutor bucking for a congressional seat, John proposes to work undercover to snare high profile dealers to earn his son's freedom. In order to get an introduction into the underworld, he enlists the reluctant aid of an ex-con in his employ named Daniel (Jon Bernthal), a former gangbanger trying hard to go straight.

Snitch is directed by former stuntman Ric Roman Waugh, who co-wrote the script with Justin Haythe (Revolutionary Road and the upcoming Lone Ranger). The story strains credibility, especially when John researches drug cartels on Wikipedia than drives to a grimy street corner to chat up a random crook. Even in his deepest desperation, a sharp businessman like John should have known better.  And when John mows down members of a Mexican cartel in his 18-wheeler while wielding a shotgun, you can't help but feel Snitch giving up on its sermonizing.

Johnson equates himself well in his most dramatic role to date. Jon Bernthal, who made his name as Shane on The Walking Dead, is cast as that character's polar opposite. He gives the best performance in the film, which may have been more interesting had he and Johnson switched roles. With his bulging biceps hidden within the sleeves of his thick jacket, Johnson engulfs the frame too often to play the everyman. The supporting cast includes Barry Pepper and his tremendous goatee as the DEA agent handling Jason's case, Benjamin Bratt as a Mexican drug lord known as El Topo, and Michael K. Williams typecast as a creepy drug dealer in the vein of Omar Little.

Snitch is a pedestrian action movie masquerading as a socially conscious drama.

Rating: ** (*****)

Fast Five

Fast Five - Dir. Justin Lin (2011)

The Fast & the Furious franchise revs its engines for an improbable fifth time. The gang is all back, faster than ever and not as furious as before, according to the shortened title.

Fast Five immediately picks up where Fast & Furious left off with Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) rescued from a prison bus by rogue law officer Brian O'Connor and girlfriend Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster). The trio flees to picturesque Rio de Janeiro where they find themselves on the hit list of local kingpin Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), who has an army of goons and half the police force at his disposal. Our protagonists strike back by initiating a daring plan to steal $100 million locked tight in a high-tech vault underneath the police station. In order to do so, they must assemble an all-star crew of characters from previous films, including the laid-back Han (Sung Kang), Israeli bombshell Gisele (Gal Gadot), and glib motor mouth Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson).

Their complex scheme grows even more complicated with the introduction of a hard-assed federal agent named Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) tasked with bringing in the fugitives.

Fast Five is everything you expect it to be. This isn't Harold Pinter, but a robust precursor to the big-budget extravaganzas of summer movie season. Fast Five speaks to the inner child of anyone who spent their youth smashing Hot Wheels together. If you tune into NASCAR events in the hopes of seeing a fiery wreck, then this is the movie for you. Fast Five is junk food cinema so slickly directed by Justin Lin (who helmed the previous two pictures) that even the subtitles have to stylishly fly across the screen. The franchise is refreshed by its new environment with Rio deftly replacing the urban cityscapes of the earlier movies. As required by any film shot in the Brazilian city, there are sweeping panorama shots all revolving around the iconic statue of Christ the Redeemer. Fast Five is hardly a travelogue to promote tourism considering all the drug labs, corrupt cops, and machine gun toting teenagers. It's a far cry from the city full of happy-go-lucky song birds depicted in Blue Sky Studios' Rio. The local government is probably longing for the days when all they had to deal with was The Simpsons.

Lin isn't the most innovative action director around, but he's competent enough to achieve the wanton destruction necessary to sate the ids of the audience. The film opens with a bus crash, and follows up with the gang stealing muscle cars off a moving train. As seen in the trailer, it all culminates with Toretto and O'Connor driving off a bridge and leaping into the water ala Butch and Sundance. The climax sees our heroes ripping through the streets while hauling behind the aforementioned vault. Storefronts are shattered and dozens of cars are wrecked, crumpled, and flung off the roads. The action isn't all vehicular carnage, there's a fast-paced foot chase over the rooftops of the favelas and a bald-headed alpha male smackdown between Vin Diesel and the ass-kicker formerly known as The Rock. While there is a surprising lack of scantily-clad babes, Gal Gadot does show off her shapely bikini bod as a welcome contrast to all the sweaty beefcake being thrown about. Also added to the mix is Elsa Pataky (wife of Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth) as a rookie cop and the lone officer not on Reyes' payroll.

The acting is exactly what you'd expect as well. Paul Walker continues to be the definition of white bread imbuing O'Connor with a special kind of blandness. Meanwhile, co-star Vin Diesel almost lapses into self-parody as Toretti, a man of few words and even fewer facial expressions. Diesel mostly stands stoically and growls a few curt sentences.

Long-time followers the series may be disappointed to find street racing has taken a backseat for this latest sequel. The drastic change is wholly exemplified when Toretto and O'Connor return to a familiar setting to challenge a local racer. The race is glommed over entirely as the movie cuts to Toretto enjoying his spoils of war. Lin and screenwriter Chris Morgan reach out to a wider audience by turning Fast Five into a heist picture with an Ocean's Eleven-sized ensemble. The almost unwieldy cast isn't the only thing bloated here. Indicative of Hollywood excess, Fast Five stands at two hours and ten minutes, which is about thirty minutes too long for a movie like this. Screen time is padded out by unnecessary and laughable scenes attempting to inject some sort of gravitas and emotional depth to its cardboard characters. Let's face facts; the majority of the audience isn't invested in heartfelt soliloquies about Toretto's search for familial stability or O'Connor's struggle with impending fatherhood. They want to see cars get smashed, smashed real good.

Who would have thought these films would still be kicking around a decade later? Fast Five is easily the best picture in the series, which might sound like a backhanded compliment. The original movie was essentially Point Break with cars, instead of surfboards. The ridiculously named 2 Fast 2 Furious was just Bad Boys-lite and the less said about the direct-to-video level Tokyo Drift, the better. Fast Five more than makes up for the leaden actioner that was the article-less Fast & Furious by offering the simple pleasures of loud, tire-screeching spectacle. Even if it does feel like it was written by a five-year old.

Be sure to stay through the ending credits for an additional scene that serves as a prelude for the inevitable Fast Six.

Rating: *** (*****)

Faster

Faster - Dir. George Tillman Jr. (2010)

Faster marks the welcome return of Dwayne Johnson to the action genre after a string of family friendly films like Race to Witch Mountain and Tooth Fairy. Faster is a throwback to the gritty movies of the 70's as evidenced by a taciturn protagonist painted in shades of gray and his vintage muscle car. Johnson has admitted to studying Clint Eastwood to portray the hero who lets his gun do all the talking for him.

Faster opens with Johnson being released from prison after serving ten years. Once out, he jogs to a nearby junkyard where he finds a 1970 Chevy Chevelle stashed under a tarp. A revolver is waiting for him in the glove compartment along with a list of targets. Johnson stomps into an office building and shoots a telemarketer right in the head. It is only then that Johnson is identified as simply Driver.

As it turns out the telemarketer deserved to die for something other than just being a telemarketer (Courtney Gains). Driver and his brother (Matt Gerald) were part of a bank robbing crew that was ambushed by another gang. The brother was murdered and Driver was shot in the head. Miraculously, he survived and embarks on a path of vengeance against the men who killed his beloved brother. The telemarketer was just the first on the list. As for the others, some have seemingly reformed while others are just as nasty as ever.

Faster is a simple enough premise. It's a lean, mean revenge movie with Johnson looking so jacked; you would think he was making a return to the wrestling ring. Tillman directs with a clean hand without ever drowning the action in overly stylish visuals. If only the script by Tony & Joe Gayton (who penned the underrated The Salton Sea) had followed suit. The story splits its focus from the Driver and towards a pair of antagonists that stand in the way of his mission. Billy Bob Thornton plays Cop, a burnt out detective just ten days away from retirement. He juggles his hunt for the Driver with a heroin addiction and an estranged wife (Moon Bloodgood). Cop's relationship with his insecure, overweight son recalls Thornton's darkly comic turn in Bad Santa. Cop is partnered with Det. Cicero (Carla Gugino) who is barely tolerant of his slovenly manner.

On the other side of the law is Killer (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a hitman with a British accent and a colorful backstory. It's gleaned that Killer has shaped his mind and body to perfection. A thrillseeker and former software wunderkind who has turned his fortunes to the art of murder for hire. He lives in an ultramodern mansion with his girlfriend, Lily (Maggie Grace), who shares his love of assault weapons. Killer stalks his prey while conversing with his therapist on his Bluetooth headset. He's a wild, out-of-left-field character that feels like he's been dropped in from a completely different film. Just as you're getting into the Driver's ass-kicking quest, Faster takes you on a detour into the personal lives of Cop and Killer. This three-pronged assault doesn't allot the screen time that the lead character deserves.

Despite a lack of focus, Faster is a passable actioner, one content to play with the archetypes of the genre rather than reinvent them. It's a slower paced, less stylish affair compared to The Rundown, but it's a damn sight better than the atrocious Doom.

Rating: ** (*****)

The Other Guys

The Other Guys - Dir. Adam McKay (2010)


Riggs and Murtaugh. Tango and Cash. Add Hoitz and Gamble to the buddy cop pantheon.

The Other Guys opens in true action film fashion with a rousing car chase through the streets of New York City as top cops, Danson (Dwayne Johnson) and Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson), run down the perpetrators. A massive amount of property damage is done to bring in a few crooks possessing a miniscule amount of marijuana. Back at the station house, Danson and Highsmith are greeted with a hero’s welcome. None of the accolades are thrown the way of Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) and Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell). They don’t blow shit up, they don’t get the girls, nor do they make the big arrests.

Hoitz could be doing those things, if not for an embarrassing shooting mishap, which relegated him to desk duty. His partner, Gamble, is a forensic accountant who gleefully enjoys paperwork and has no desire to see any action in the field. While investigating a minor oversight in construction permits, Gamble and Hoitz uncover a Bernie Madoff-style plot by millionaire mogul David Ershon (Steve Coogan) to embezzle $32 billion.

The main cast also features Michael Keaton as the precinct captain who moonlights as the manager of a Bed Bath and Beyond, Eva Mendes as Gamble’s inexplicably hot wife, Ray Stevenson as an Australian mercenary, and an uncredited Anne Heche as a corrupt CEO employing Ershon.

The Other Guys is the fourth collaboration between director Adam McKay and Will Ferrell following Anchorman, Talladega Nights and Step Brothers. Other Guys isn’t as hilarious as the first two films, but it’s several notches above the somewhat crass Step Brothers. As a spoof of buddy cop films, it works better than Kevin Smith’s Cop Out. However, the genre has become such a self-parody of itself that McKay is simply beating a dead horse. Seeing Wahlberg in a slow-mo John Woo shootout isn’t as funny as it should be because the gag has been done to death.

Where the film excels is in the interactions between the lead actors. Wahlberg has given some terribly wooden performances recently in The Happening and The Lovely Bones. He’s better suited for action and comedy and he’s excellent as the hotheaded straight man. Ferrell’s idiot man-child routine wears thin so he wisely tones it down for Other Guys. There’s a slow burn for his character as they slowly reveal the darker side he’s hidden.

McKay tops it off with his own brand of absurdist humor displayed in many hysterical gags sprinkled throughout the film. Some of the funniest bits include: Coogan bribing our heroes with tickets to Jersey Boys, a run-in with a group of horny hobos led by a fellow named Dirty Mike (played by McKay himself), an ending credits sequence utilizing Powerpoint-style animation to explain Ponzi schemes and government bailouts, and Ferrell constantly being hit on by gorgeous women like Brooke Shields (wife of co-writer Chris Henchy).

Rating: ***

Tooth Fairy

Tooth Fairy - Dir. Michael Lembeck (2010)


During Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s early wrestling career, fans detested his clean-cut, good guy character so much that they chanted, “Die, Rocky, Die.” The chant now should probably be, “Why, Rocky, Why?” Johnson may not be the most nuanced performer around, but he’s got a natural charisma which you can’t learn in acting school. It was an easy transition for The Rock to move from pro wrestling superstar to action hero. In The Rundown, Arnold Schwarzenegger popped up in a quick cameo to pass the proverbial torch to Johnson. “Have fun,” the Governator said. We still haven’t gotten that blockbuster film from Johnson, even if it looks like he’s having fun in his recent string of subpar, family comedies.

Johnson starred as a football player who has to learn what’s really important in life in The Game Plan. In Tooth Fairy, he’s a hockey player who has to learn what’s really important in life. Johnson is Derek Thompson who was busted down to the minors after a shoulder injury. With his NHL career over, he is now more than content with becoming a brutish enforcer nicknamed, “The Tooth Fairy,” because he knocks out opposing players’ teeth. Off the ice, Thompson romances single mom Carly (Ashley Judd) and attempts to bond with her children, Tess (Destiny Whitlock) and the cynical Randy (Chase Ellison).

After telling one child to “lower his expectations” and attempting to reveal that the tooth fairy isn’t real to Tess, Thompson is whisked away to Fairyland (seriously) where he is sentenced to work as an actual tooth fairy to pay his debts to society. In Fairyland, he meets his case worker, Tracy (Stephen Merchant), and the head fairy, Lily (Julie Andrews in full on Julie Andrews mode). Billy Crystal is there too doing a variation of Miracle Max from The Princess Bride as a fairy who provides Thompson with a bag of magical gadgets to perform his duties.

As a concept, Tooth Fairy has been floating around development hell since the mid-90’s. The script has passed through the hands of at least five different writers including the veteran team of Babaloo Mandel and Lowell Ganz (Parenthood, City Slickers). You’d think somewhere along the way, someone would have come up with something funny. Instead, we get lame gags like Thompson plummeting from a balcony because he can’t work his wings or trying to hide his tights from his teammates. We also get bad puns like, “That’s the tooth,” and “Fairy evolution? Who come up with that Charles Darwing?”

The concept itself is downright moronic. Thompson is told that Fairyland is in danger because kids have stopped believing in the Tooth Fairy. We never learn what exactly will happen nor do we learn why it’s so damn important to have these fairies around. And we still don’t know what the hell they do with all those teeth. Also, where exactly do they get the funding necessary to leave behind a dollar under all those pillows? Here’s another important question, who gives a shit about the Tooth Fairy? I guess with so many Santa movies, they were grasping at straws for another mythical character. Personally, I think the Tooth Fairy ranks well below the Easter Bunny and Hanukkah Harry.

Johnson is likable enough to save this mess from being a total loss. However, Tooth Fairy is the kind of inane movie that shamefully passes itself off as family entertainment. 2009 saw so many great family films with heart and intelligence (Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Up, Where the Wild Things Are) that it churns the stomach to see Hollywood take a step back with this nonsense. If you don't want your kid's teeth to fall out, don't feed them sugary junk food. If you don't want your kid's brain cells to fall out, don't take them to see Tooth Fairy. The tooth does indeed hurt. A painful experience on par with a gum scraping or root canal.

Rating: *

Race to Witch Mountain

Race to Witch Mountain - Dir. Andy Fickman (2009)


Disney somehow manages to move forward by going backwards as they once again cannibalize their past. I watched the original Escape to Witch Mountain numerous times as it was constantly rerun on the Disney Channel. It hasn’t really stood up to the test of time. Maybe my tastes have grown more sophisticated over time. Race to Witch Mountain will appeal to the younger demographics today as the original did to the children of the 70’s. The original relied on easy contrivances and hokey special effects. The remake does exactly the same, but with a bigger budget.

Dwayne Johnson (no longer the Rock) is the manly named Jack Bruno, a former ex-con, now working as a cab driver in Vegas. After a run-in with the henchmen of his former boss, Jack finds a pair of siblings named Seth (Alexander Ludwig) and Sara (AnnaSophia Robb) who hand him a wad of cash and tell him to drive. Seth and Sara are aliens whose ship has crash landed in the Nevada desert. The former has telepathic and telekinetic powers while the latter has the ability to shift his molecular density. The two kids must retrieve an alien doohickey and return to their craft or their home planet will be destroyed and Earth will be invaded. There’s also an assassin called the Siphon that kills everything in its path to capture the children. Jack receives assistance from astrophysicist Dr. Alex Friedman (Carla Gugino). In an interesting note (one of the film’s few), Dr. Friedman is respected by neither her serious-minded colleagues who mock her beliefs in extraterrestrial life or UFO enthusiasts who only want to hear stories about anal probes and cattle mutilation.

The original film had the right idea in packing the supporting cast with veteran actors, such as Donald Pleasance and Eddie Albert, to lend some credibility to the goofiness around them. The remake does the same casting Ciaran Hinds as a humorless Man in Black, Garry Marshall as a renowned UFO expert, and Cheech in a thankless bit role as an auto mechanic. Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann, who starred in the original, make cameo appearances as a waitress and small-town sheriff.

Johnson equates himself well in the role even if he’s not the most multi-faceted actor around. He’s likeable and charismatic, but not enough to carry the weak material.

Rating: * ½