Rampage

George of the Urban Jungle and the Rock try to out-scary face one another.

(2018) Adventure (New Line) Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Malin Akerman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jake Lacy, Joe Manganiello, Marley Shelton, P.J. Byrne, Demetrius Grosse, Jack Quaid, Breanne Hill, Matt Gerald, Will Yun Lee, Urijah Faber, Bruce Blackshear, Jason Liles, Mat Wells, Stephen Dunleavy, Danny Le Boyer, Alan Boell, Alyssa Brooke. Directed by Brad Peyton

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the movies, it’s that when you mess with mother nature it tends to come back and bite you in the ass eventually. That’s a lesson that seems lost on modern corporate America (and the regulatory agencies that are supposed to reign them in but that’s a different story).

When a space station explodes after a lab rat gets loose and tears the crew apart, the pathogen that caused the rat to mutate falls back to Earth, affecting a gator in the Everglades, a wolf in the Minnesota woods – and a gentle albino ape who dwells in the San Diego zoo. The primatologist who is studying George, Davis Okoye (Johnson) is understandably peeved but when government sorts led by the cheerful and shamefully Texan Harvey Russell (Morgan), the Rock’s biceps begin to twitch. When George, like the wolf and the alligator, begins to grow in size to something approaching a Japanese monster movie, behave aggressively and even savagely (they’re animals; who knew?) and for a fairly ludicrous plot reason decide to converge on Chicago and tear the city limb from limb, well the eyebrows arch and the people’s elbow start itching for a fight.

Based on an Atari-era videogame (the console box for which can be seen in the background of the office of the sibling corporate types (Akerman and Lacy) who are behind the pathogen, the movie seemed to have all the elements of a summer blockbuster, particularly Johnson whose easygoing charm and likability have propelled him onto the Hollywood A-list. However, Johnson is essentially on autopilot here. This is far from his finest hour and although he’s not the reason this movie fails to succeed (a painfully cliché script is largely to glame), he certainly doesn’t elevate it either.

Morgan as the federal agent who really wants to be a Texas Ranger and Akerman as a heartless corporate bitch are actually the actors who are the most watchable here. The CGI creations are also pretty nifty. However the mayhem – like many Transformers movies – is so overwhelming it becomes almost too much to take in; the mind becomes numbed to the carnage as buildings fall, helicopters are swatted from the sky and people are eaten like…well, energy pills in a videogame which in the original game, people were.

I’m not against mindless fun but the filmmakers ask us to take an awful lot on faith and after awhile the plot holes become too enormous to overcome. The human characters tend to be more like cartoons than the CGI which I find ironic in an amusing kind of way but I didn’t at the time I was watching this. There were a lot of things that could have been done with this premise to make this film better than it turned out to be but Peyton and perhaps the studio suits went the tried and true safe route and ended up making a cookie cutter movie that is neither satisfying or even more than barely recommendable.

REASONS TO GO: Morgan and Akerman acquit themselves well. The CGI is excellent.
REASONS TO STAY: This movie is dumb as a rock. Most of the characters are straight out of cartoons.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a whole lot of video game-like violence, destruction and general mayhem. There’s also some brief mild profanity  and some crude gestures.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Despite the tepid aggregate score, Rampage is currently the highest-scoring video game adaptation in the history of Rotten Tomatoes.
BEYOND THE THEATERS:  Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Movies Anywhere, Vudu
CRITICAL MASS: As of 9/10/18: Rotten Tomatoes: 53% positive reviews. Metacritic: 45/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Kong: Skull Island
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: Mercury 13

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Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday

When hitchhiking, always levitate to get an immediate ride.

(2016) Comedy (Netflix) Paul Reubens, Joe Manganiello, Alia Shawkat, Stephanie Beatriz, Jessica Pohly, Doug Cox, Richard Riehle, Katherine VanderLinden, Josh Meyers, Corey Craig, Paul Rust, Monica Horan, Brian Palermo, Linda Porter, Tara Buck, John H. Mayer, Dave Power, Bobby Ray Shafer, Frank Collison, Brad William Henke, Leo Fitzpatrick, Christopher Heyerdahl, Sonya Eddy. Directed by John Lee

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Sometimes when confronted by something that was an important part of our growing up, we are surprised that it meant anything to us at all. Other times, we are reminded why it was so important in our memory in the first place – it’s like rediscovering who we once were all over again.

So it is for those who grew up with Pee-Wee’s Playhouse during its CBS run from 1986-1990. It garnered 15 Emmys in those five years and changed the nature of children’s television. It also ended with the star disgraced after a public indecency incident which effectively derailed his career. Reubens, who played a man-boy character in a skinny grey suit with red bow-tie, pale skin and red lips, a 1950s haircut and an irrepressible attitude, made some cameo appearances but only recently has returned as a character actor, appearing most recently in the Gotham TV series.

Reubens is 63 now and his image is digitally enhanced to retain the youthful appearance of Pee-Wee Herman (Reubens). Still, he is placed in the idyllic small town of Fairville where he is the beloved fry-cook at the local diner, a man who’s never left the town limits and doesn’t aspire to. That is, until Joe Manganiello (Manganiello) roars into town on his motorcycle.

At first, all Manganiello wants is a chocolate shake – and Pee Wee makes a tasty one. But the men bond over a shared love of Root Beer Barrels candy and Manganiello impulsively invites his new best buddy to his birthday party in New York City in a week. He also advises Pee Wee to take a road trip rather than an airplane – the better to learn more about himself.

And so Pee-Wee hits the road and in some ways, the road hits back from a trio of brash bank robbing women straight out of a Russ Myers movie to an Amish community who are not ready for Pee-Wee to the most drawn-out Farmer’s Daughter joke in history, Pee-Wee discovers an America which is in many ways the way we imagine it would be, only through a skewed lens, but the more that happens to Pee-Wee the farther it seems he gets from his goal. Will he make it to New York for Joe’s party?

Those who loved Pee-Wee’s Playhouse are going to greet this movie with affection and nostalgia. Does it live up to the expectations of that show? Well, let’s be honest – Reubens set a very high bar with the show and movie, and I will have to say I’m not sure that Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday clears that bar, but it comes close enough that most devoted fans should be satisfied.

It also stands to reason that those who found Pee-Wee’s Playhouse less of a place they wanted to play in will probably not find this any more palatable. The same goofy vibe pervades and the same scattered sense of humor dominates. While most of the characters from the original show (other than Pee-Wee himself) are not involved, most fans will find the tone right in their wheelhouse.

Like much of the Playhouse material, the humor is a bit scattershot and some of the stuff works here better than other stuff. There is a sense that the filmmakers are trying a little too hard to recapture the magic and at times things feel a little forced. I have heard the complaint that Pee-Wee is essentially something of a one-note character but I don’t think that’s true, although he doesn’t have as much depth as some of the Muppets who always seem to have a lot of that for characters made of felt and wood.

I suspect those who have planned to see this likely already have and are either planning future viewings or have had their fill. However, those of you who are on the fence about this should be warned (or re-assured) that this is essentially more of the same of what you’re used to – not a bad thing of itself, but the material here while it doesn’t live up to the standards of the original doesn’t disappoint overly much either.

REASONS TO GO: Quirky and imaginative. Very charming in places.
REASONS TO STAY: An acquired taste. One gets a sense that the filmmakers are trying too hard.
FAMILY VALUES: Some rude humor here.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Lyonne and Greenfield both appear in the sitcom New Girl.
BEYOND THE THEATER: Netflix
CRITICAL MASS: As of 3/28/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 79% positive reviews. Metacritic: 63/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: The Mermaid

Magic Mike XXL

You’re welcome, ladies.

(2015) Comedy (Warner Brothers) Channing Tatum, Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Adam Rodriguez, Gabriel Iglesias, Kevin Nash, Elizabeth Banks Andie MacDowell, Amber Heard, Michael Strahan, Donald Glover, Stephen Boss, Rhoda Griffis, Jane McNeill, Ann Hamilton, Mary Kraft, Kimberly Drummond, Carrie Anne Hunt. Directed by Gregory Jacobs

Sometimes a movie is only as good as the audience you view it with. I can’t imagine seeing Magic Mike XXL in a room full of dour, jaded critics. They would never get what this movie is about on their own. What I did see this movie with was a room full of screaming, hooting, hollering women who would have thrown dollar bills at the screen had they thought of it.

And that’s just how Magic Mike XXL should be experienced. Channing Tatum returns as the titular male entertainer, now having hung up his G-string with a custom-made furniture business. His girlfriend from Magic Mike has left him and while he is doing what he wanted to do in the first film, he kind of misses the life. When Tarzan (Nash) calls, Mike comes running. The remaining Kings of Tampa – Dallas (Matthew McConaughey’s character from the first film) having absconded to Europe with the Alex Pettyfer character – are ready to close out their careers with a bang, at a male stripper convention in Myrtle Beach over the Fourth of July weekend. So Mike piles in to a fro-yo van owned by Tito (Rodriguez) along with Ken (Bomer), Tobias (Iglesias) and Big Dick Richie (Manganiello) for a road trip for bros.

So this becomes a road trip movie, with a stop in Savannah to visit Rome, a private club run by Rome (Smith)  in which female members get up close and personal with a gaggle of strippers whose members include Augustus (Strahan), Andre (Glover) and Malik (Boss). With Tobias having been injured in a van accident, the Kings are in dire need of an M.C. and ask Rome who declines. She and Mike have a history y’see…

After a stop in house of randy older women including Nancy (MacDowell), the mother of Megan (Hunt) whom they met in a Jacksonville bar and whose buddy Zoe (Heard) is the new romantic interest of Mike, in a kind of non-threatening platonic way they run into Rome who has changed her mind and it’s on to Myrtle Beach, the Redneck Riviera, where the boys will go out with a bang.

This isn’t nearly as serious a movie as the first Magic Mike was. That movie’s director, Steven Soderbergh, is still behind the camera but as a cinematographer this time. What we have here is more of a road movie that doesn’t take itself nearly as seriously. I will give you that the filmmakers understand their target audience as the women in our audience lost their minds nearly every time that the men started dancing or stripping. However, it was surprising to me that most of the women in the audience seemed to be fonder of Manganiello than of Tatum, although after one simulated sex/dance sequence featuring the star, one audience member exclaimed “I think I need a cigarette.”

\I will also say that the movie does look at the bond between men in a way not usual to Hollywood, which tends to view male bonding as a macho thing done over guns, cars and violence. The Kings of Tampa are all pretty sensitive guys who admire and respect women rather than viewing them as objects to be taken to bed as conquests and then cast aside. They view what they do as a kind of therapy, giving their clients something they need – not just a sexual release but adoration as well. I think most women’s fantasies are about guys like these, sensitive but sexy, handsome and hot as well. What woman wouldn’t want to be adored by guys like these?

The plot is kind of threadbare and I was left wondering if I’d seen this in a room full the aforementioned dour and jaded critics would I have liked this movie as much? Probably not. Because the women in the audience were having such a good time, I ended up having as good a time as well and that’s something to consider. The movie is in many ways not nearly as good as its predecessor but in many ways better – it gives its audience exactly what they want and that isn’t such a bad thing at all.

REASONS TO GO: Has heart as well as tush. We end up caring what happens to these guys.
REASONS TO STAY: Extremely lightweight and disposable. More of an experience than a movie.
FAMILY VALUES: Language, male butt nudity, sexual situations and some drug use.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Holdridge and Saasen not only co-starred and co-directed the film but also co-wrote it based on their own experiences.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/19/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 64% positive reviews. Metacritic: 60/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Little Miss Sunshine
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Finding Bliss