Reviews

I start with the ending, so major spoiler warning- ---------- You have to admit that the idea of 30 sleeper-suicide-bombers duped into boarding the same bus has a funny side to it. But it probably would not occur to you till way after the credits roll. Steve Martin had to contend with all the usual trappings such movies inevitably run up against, and he handles them decently, but in doing so he had to sacrifice some of the reality he attempts to portray. Here's a partial reality-checklist; 1. Sleepers awaiting their suicide-mission is ludicrous. The indoctrination is intense, the brainwashing is constant and up to the last minute, the candidates fit a certain profile and they would not function in normal society for a week, let alone for years on end. Albeit, the 'threat' must be insidious, exceed our expectations in some novel way and as such it's a passable premise.

2. The idea of a 'leak' within the agency is preposterous, we're well aware of lie-detectors, background checks, screening, etc. On the other hand, they have no choice but to level the playing field, the suspense/buildup would fizzle out were it to remain in first gear.

3. The obvious solution for Samir (Cheadle) would have been to neutralize *all* the bombs, having ample opportunities on his 'infidel-express' delivery route. Sure, that would have been anticipated and as such, anti-climatic, although it could have led to some great aftermath scenes of passengers tackling these individuals down. Likewise, some of the bombs did not go off, otherwise we would need to be told the sleepers were all on the same bus. Again, it could have played almost the same if at the last minute the camera traveled up the aisle, disclosing the plot-twist, yet here again, the bombers would have died in the bliss of their ignorance, much to our dissatisfaction.

4. Upon being apprehended Samir had no reason to pursue his 'role', the sham is tempered with a punch to the stomach, a weak one I'd say.

5. The computer-generated model of the second mastermind was just laughable, the idea being that some cutting-edge software is piecing together a composite so that once it completes the 3D render, they can close in on him, please... I guess it plays OK as a visual device, till you think about it.

Fighting fanaticism with fanaticism is one way to sum up this movie, while the moral may just be that you shouldn't. Either way, the globe-trotting scene-settings and the overall feel and snippets of the dialogue were first-class, I saw someone dub it the intellectual's Bourne, which is funny, considering how Ludlum's Bourne was deemed a cut above the spy novels of its time. We've grown too savvy for our own entertainment needs (sigh)...

For all the CG brute force on display, this is one lame flop-along of a flic. The same constructs we've seen in dozens if not hundreds of other movies are rehashed, and why? Because what can you really do with a raging bullfrog on steroids? A second, even bigger, bullfrog? A Dr.Jekyll & Mr.Hyde meets Beauty & the Beast in stretchy pants? The thinking man's King Kong on a self-help quest? They just can't help but fall back on the same clichés and feeble structure with good ol' time-warps to fast-track to the climatic fight scene -and prep it up for the sequel before rolling the credits. Depravity is when you have a super-bezerking giant on a havoc-spree toned down to pg-13. One-liners as motives for us to swallow; "You don't deserve the power!" and so much homage-fromage as filler, it's downright cannibalistic.

Cheesy hilights...

Two-dimensional bad-ass co-workers, what would heroes do without them? The babe they harass comes across as a cowering doe, nothing wrong with that I guess...

Overnight the Hulk runs from Rio to Guatemala, that's more or less from New York to Alaska. But he panhandles/walks the rest of the way home...

General-Colonel-whatever, answers to no one, heads his own shop for years on end, runs a military op in Brazil, on university grounds, NYC, no inquiries, no hell to pay, nada...

'Stanley' (clever, eh) the pizza-place... every home-coming-hero-on-the-run has one, older guy with a spare room upstairs, money to lend, keeps a tab on everyone- Banner; Is she seeing someone..? Stanley; "He's a head-shrink. They say he's one of the best(sic).. but a really nice guy..." (thank-you, Stanley..)

Bribing a security guard with a free pizza to not catch hell for a non-delivery on a pizza? Bribing another guy in the computer lab with second pizza..? How gullible and gluttonous and famished and broke must regular folks be made out to be...?

Betty's tag-along setup - "Well, at least let me walk you to the station."

Swallowing the disk-on-key before turning into the Hulk, how would Banner know the Hulk's stomach juices wouldn't dissolve or at least ruin it?

Of course the Hulk can't outright kill any foot-soldier, his rage is against machinery, movie-taboo exception would be anyone within contraption such as the helicopter crew...

Pawning a necklace to buy a second-hand pickup and pay for gas, they abandon the wheels because of roadblocks into NYC and then pay off some other guy to ferry them across... and then pay some maniac cab-driver for another, mindless, hi-speed sequence...

Abomination swatting all them blind pedestrians- blind because they're impervious to his standing there, his motive; looking for a real fight... soldiers trying latest shoulder-missiles, they don't work so they drive in reverse till they bump into pile-up, cab driver (must be that same maniac) drives right into 12' monster, fear-stricken soldiers stay in place while Abomination goes 'give me a real fight' before slamming cab into them...

The helicopter crash-lands into the church ruins, but try as they might to get out, an unconscious/dead soldier is propped in the only opening so that Betty exasperates in her struggle to escape as the fuselage catches fire (only for Hulk to hand-clap it out)...

For all the violence they inflict one on the other, and for all their super-strengths, it's an indestructible chain that allows the Hulk to subdue Abomination. And it's Betty that stops the Hulk from killing him, he's vanquished, right, so just let him be...they'll super-handcuff his ass to a super-cell till the sequel...

Every such finale must entail a crowd, no matter how preposterous for people to show up.

Hulk departs a la Spidey minus cobwebs...

aaga-gaga-gaga...

Whatever happened to Keaton is what I want to know.

Actually I don't, I crawled away, heaving, thinking she must owe half the bookies in Vegas, or maybe not, maybe she was just brainwashed, blackmailed and bored to death. Rich enough to adopt a third-world country, she somehow had to star in yet another cookie-cut, cliché-ridden drool'athon, based on the same character-franchise she's been rehashing since 'Father of the Bride'('91). You'd think she's going head to head with Mr.Bean.

(Spoilers)

So hubby (Dax) get's fired by obnoxious son of boss, his mom (Keaton)leaves his dad after classic row, and crashes over with her own dog-show in tow, oh those little rascals. Hubby's got cold-feet for diaper-duty, wifey's clock a-ticking and hey, let's toss in a space-cadet as second house-guest for good measure, all in one day because that's so funny and original. Wife gets fed up and walks away, mom leaves dad for space-cadet and the couple makes up in time for closing credits, 86 very long minutes later.

Now if you have to have a space-cadet, he can't be devious as well, he can't scheme some excuse for his stayover, and if mom leaves dad, she can't hop into a cab dressed as a pumpkin just because some scriptwriter agonized over how to cheer thing up.

Plus that gag whereby they invite her in only to then discover she's got her canine entourage in the cab has got to be outlawed by now. And you only get one obnoxious 2-dimensional boss to denigrate. Another movie-killer would be the movie-script the space cadet is toiling away at, supposedly more lame than the actual one, again, dejas-ad-nausea.

Liv Tyler doesn't seem happy here, her voice was weird at times, it had me wondering if they later had her redub some of it, and she's a smart one, she's handled great roles and we'll forgive her for Jersey Girl, it was disaster-prone, could happen to anyone. Dax Shepard was watchable and that's being generous considering the material.

Personally, it's the director, the screenwriters and especially the producers that I would love to see tar'n'feathered before shipped to Guantanamo as playthings for the prisoners, and that's me keeping this 'lite'.

Hilarious hardly begins to describe this one of a kind genuine tour-de-Star-Wars-force (Luke: how strong? Vader: the strength of a small pony), in which, being the master he is, he doesn't even break a sweat, ingeniously sparing himself mascara leakage.. -and that's with almost 2 hours of whirling his way thru history, its birthplace, Europe, and more.

From Heimlich's middle-of-the-night, "I've invented a maneuver!" to the British Empire's "..do you have a flag..?" and ancient deadbeat gods, "Jeff! The God of Biscuits!" and many more, this is fish-flop-on-the-floor-to-jumpstart-your-lungs funny.

And I confess to having passed on this video dozens of times over the years, seeing as a British transvestite standup, vogueing on a chair, is one longshot of a rental after all, especially one going back 10 years now. And yet, the material is not only timeless but almost oracular, turning present day into nothing more than an amplified, funnier/sadder version of where we were at a decade ago, although come to think about it, that may just be a coincidence.