THIS IS STUPID!

Gamer, Gerald Butler's star vehicle gives the bastard child of mixing The Running Man with Death Race and he owes us all an apology.

I have suffered through more than my fair share of crappy movies. I've seen moronic movies, dumb movies, feckless movies even embarrassingly misguided ones. Of those bad movies it is common to see the reason why it was made. There is generally a hook or concept threaded somewhere in the presentation that shows there was someone thinking someone at one time. I couldn't find one such concept here.

This is the deposit of the writing team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the guys who are responsible for (or should I say guilty of) Crank. Which, by the way, has one of those pitch-ready concepts at its core (a violent British thug has to keep his adrenaline up or he will die (Speed meets The Transporter). In this go-around they manage the Herculean effort of making Crank seem like it was penned by Moliere.

Here is the synopsis torn off of IMDb:

Set in a future-world where humans can control other humans in mass-scale, multi-player online gaming environments, a star player from a game called "Slayers" looks to regain his independence while taking down the game's mastermind.

Odd that this movie has a script, it didn't need one. They could have just pieced together random images of explosions, bullet wounds and oil, muscled men carrying weapons and it would have been roughly the same.

If for no other reason, you should skip this film because they actually cast Ludacris as someone other than a drooling moron. We're asked to believe he's computer savvy. I guess Britany Spears was unavailable during the shooting schedule.




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Labels: Alison Lohman, Amber Valletta, film, Gerald Butler, Kyra Sedgwick, Michael C. Hall, movie review

Screenwriters: Mark Neveldine (Pathology) and Brian Taylor (Crank)
Directors: Mark Neveldine (Pathology) and Brian Taylor (Crank)
Actors: Gerald Butler (300), Alison Lohman (Drag Me to Hell), Milo Ventimiglia (Pathology), Kyra Sedgwick (Something the Lord Made), Michael C. Hall (Paycheck), John Leguizamo (Ice Age) and Keith David (Barbershop)

Labels: Alison Lohman, film, Gerald Butler, John Leguizamo, Keith David, movie trailer

Short Review: Drag me to hell, just don't drag me to this movie.


Is this film is as good as Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films? Nope. Its not even close. Raimi goes back to his schlock horror movie roots with this straight forward horror story about a young woman who gets cursed by a gypsy and is then tormented by a demon on a mission to take her to Hades. There's hints of his humor, moments of his inventiveness, but its clear the youthful spark is missing. This is more of an ode to his earlier films rather than an addition to them. It is too clean and careful where his early films were kinetic.

Another deficieny is the lead. The Evil Dead movies largely succeeded because of the mixture of Raimi and his lead Bruce Campbell. Campbell's genius for camp combined with Raimi's quirky style worked beautifully. Here, Raimi's lead Alison Lohman (Matchstick Men) is too plain to add anything to the proceedings. While she looks the part of a country girl trying to make it in the big city, Lohman seems out of place with the humor. It is as if she wasn't in on the joke. Where Campbell could carry a scene with a well executed smirk, Lohman is doe-eyed and flat.

Looking at this divorced from Raimi's history, it still doesn't mount up to much. The story is simple and strong but Raimi doesn't take it as far enough. Its not scary enough to be a useful horror movie and its not funny enough to be a comedy. Since there's no other purpose for making a movie like this, we've run out of reasons to see it.



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Labels: Alison Lohman, film, horror, Justin Long, movie review, Sam Raimi

Screenwriters: Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead) and Ivan Raimi (Army of Darkness)
Director: Sam Raimi (Spider-Man)
Actors: Alison Lohman (Beowulf), Justin Long (Idiocracy) and David Paymer (Mr. Saturday Night)

Labels: Alison Lohman, David Paymer, film, Justin Long, movie trailer, Sam Raimi