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Over 30 years of reviewing movies, I’ve often been asked if I just don’t like sports movies or animated movies or whatever genre when I’ve given one a bad review. Sometimes someone will ask, “Were you in a bad mood when you watched this?” (no, but I was in a bad mood having to sit through it).
I’m sometimes told, “You gave it a bad review because it was built up too much and overhyped.”
None of that plays into my reviews. Now, I’ll never forget when Siskel & Ebert reviewed Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood). One of them gave it a bad review, and after it was nominated for over 10 Oscars, he changed his thumb to “thumbs up” claiming he watched it after a nasty fight with his wife and he wasn’t in a good mood. I call BS on that. If a great movie can be ruined because of something in your personal life, perhaps reviewing films isn’t the profession for you. And I don’t care how much something is hyped, or how much I might hate an actor because of their personal life or politics, I can sit there and take in the story as if the people on screen are those characters. That’s how you should watch a movie.
All that being said, I do think it’s important, before tearing this movie apart, to state that I hate these films. I dislike everything about them. The bad acting. The stupid facial expressions where they’re trying to look tough, but they mostly look like they smell something bad (that’s mostly Michelle Rodriquez, but Vin does them, too). The cheesy dialogue. My wife made a joke during the last one, asking “How soon until a character says ‘We’re like family’?” [spoiler alert: it was 40 minutes in for this one].
Even the stunts were CGI and stupid. I did like the cars (a ‘68 Charger, Mustang, Supra, and Dame Helen Mirren stealing a Noble M600).
The worst use of a car was the Pontiac Fiero. In what might be the dumbest segment of a film all year, two of the crew use it to go into space and destroy the bad guys’ satellite. Yes, a Fiero that looks like it was made into the Back to the Future DeLorean, going into space. I had a neighbor growing up in Mira Mesa that couldn’t keep his Fiero from going a few miles down New Salem Street without it breaking down, but...these cats get one going into space. Okay.
The movie opens at a race track, where we get some back story on Dom (Vin Diesel). His dad died in a car crash, and his younger brother Jakob (John Cena) witnesses this as well. This leads Jakob down a path of...getting his own set of muscle cars, and his own set of muscles, that are a lot bigger than big brothers. He also works for bad guys that can destroy the planet. I think. At one point, despite all the explosions and set pieces, I fell asleep. I already resented that I was watching a screening for this instead of the Clippers/Suns game, which ended on a last second alley-oop. But I digress.
Nothing about the dad dying added emotional resonance, and in other scenes where they went for that, I often found myself laughing (as was the guest I brought with me, who was really looking forward to the movie, but also hated it).
Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and Dom live off the grid and with a kid. When a car pulls up, they have a drill that has the kid immediately running to an underground bunker like a scene from Inglourious Basterds. They pull out the firearms. Oh, shucks. It was just Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej (Chris “Lucacris” Bridges). They show a video of Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) in trouble and yep -- the band is getting back together and touring.
I didn’t remember Charlize Theron was in a previous film, but when I saw her, I thought -- how can a woman look this beautiful, with such a goofy haircut? Her acting wasn’t bad, but...it’s just this idiotic dialogue the film is littered with.
There were a few visuals that were kind of fun, but completely preposterous. They involved magnets pulling cars into other cars. The worst use of a magnet is early in the movie when John Cena makes his getaway by driving his Mustang over a cliff, just as a plane is flying overhead, that uses a huge magnet to catch the car so they can fly away. The audience laughed at the ridiculousness of how stupid it looked (and they laughed every time the ludicrous scene of Ludicris in space in a Fiero). Seeing those two guys wearing space suits, looked as goofy as Dustin Hoffman wearing a hazmat suit in Outbreak (if you haven’t seen that movie from the mid-90s, don’t bother; it was awful).
But back to the magnets. It reminded me of another film that did that a few years back, and it made me think of one of the best comedies ever made -- The In-Laws. Peter Falk uses a huge magnet to steal an armored car. If you haven’t seen that, I highly recommend it.
A few of the car chases had a fun Mad Max vibe, but just as I was enjoying them, there’s be some ridiculous stunt where one guy is knocked from one vehicle, lands on another vehicle, starts punching that guy...an overhead street sign smashes the back of his head, and he keeps fighting, then jumps into an open window of another car, and...it just gets so mind numbingly stupid.
This movie was two and a half hours of my life I’ll never get back (that’s a cliche phrase that I’ve never once used in a review before but it felt appropriate here). Unless you’re a 15-year-old boy, this movie isn’t for you.
1 star out of 5.
Oh, and when they’re doing the picnic at the end of the movie, how in the world is Ludicris not drinking Tang instead of a Corona?