Movie Review: A.X.L

A.X.L (2018) 

Directed by Oliver Daly

Written by Oliver Daly 

Starring Alex Neustaedter, Becky G, Dominic Rains, Thomas Jane

Release Date August 24th, 2018 

Published August 29th, 2018

That A.X.L even exists is rather baffling. Just who thought this was a good idea: A dirt bike racing teen befriends a robot dog and attempts to save him from the evil corporation that created him. It’s a concept that might have worked in a 1970’s Disney movie but in 2018 it comes off like an idea we’d poke fun at for being like a 1970’s Disney movie. A.X.L is a deeply, painfully, earnest story without wit or consciousness.

 A.X.L stars Alex Neustadter, a star of such magnitude that he is listed third in the credits on IMDB despite being the star of the movie, aside from the CGI. Miles, as the character is named, is a dirt bike racer without a sponsor who is befriended by Sam (AlexMacNicoll), a big time racing star from the same hometown in California. Through Sam, Miles meets and falls for Sara (YouTube sensation and pop star Becky G, top-billed on IMDB) whose mother works for Sam’s family.

The three form a love triangle that will be tested when Sam and Miles are pitted against each other on the dirt bike track. Or, at least, that was the plot to one of the movies that someone cobbled together into A.X.L. The other movie is about a robot dog created by an evil corporate operative played by Dominic Rains and his lackey played by Lou Taylor Pucci. Thomas Jane and Ted McGinley round out the cast as ineffectual parents or actors just picking up a paycheck.

A.X.L is one of the most misguided movies I have seen come along in some time. The plot is utter nonsense, Short Circuit meets The Dirt Bike Kid perhaps, and the performances are irredeemably bland. Poor Alex Neustadter looks like he’d rather be anywhere else than pretending to be acting in front of a robot dog and Thomas Jane appears to be on hand to have a beer and get paid for the privilege.

None of the cast appear to be all that interested in the movie with everyone seeming to adopt the same wide-eyed, gape-mouthed expression to communicate every emotion of every scene. No joke, try watching this movie and not noticing the number of blank-eyed stares. It’s rather humorous but I wouldn’t recommend it as a drinking game. Then again, I don’t recommend anything about A.X.L.

One last note, A.X.L has the dubious distinction of having brought down its studio. Global Road Entertainment, according to industry magazine Variety, is trying to off-load the last of its movies after falling into the hands of lenders. It wasn’t all of A.X.L’s fault, the studio also released the pricey bombs Midnight Sun, Hotel Artemis and Show Dogs, but A.X.L with its CGI robot puppy, could not have helped matters, especially after opening to less than 3 million dollars opening weekend at the box office. Woof!

Movie Review: Dreamcatcher

Dreamcatcher (2003) 

Directed by Lawrence Kasden

Written by William Goldman 

Starring Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Damian Lewis, Timothy Olyphant, Donnie Wahlberg

Release Date March 21st, 2003

Published March 20th, 2003 

For once Stephen King is publicly saying he likes a movie made from one of his books. Always his work’s harshest critic, King claims to never have been fully satisfied with any screen adaptation. However, the newest King adaptation, Dreamcatcher, has earned his seal of approval. That is likely because it is the most too-the-word adaptation of any of King's work. Dreamcatcher seems to go out of it's way to be faithful to King's vision, some might say that’s a good thing, some like myself disagree.

In Dreamcatcher we meet four guys, friends since childhood, who share the unique ability to communicate telepathically and read people’s minds. This ability stems from a childhood incident when they saved a retarded boy nicknamed Duddits from a group of bullies. Now adults, the four friends, Henry (Thomas Jane), Jonesy (Daniel Lewis), Beaver (Jason Lee) and Pete (Timothy Olyphant) planning a trip to a shared cabin in the woods. The trip is called off when Jonesy is nearly killed in a sick looking car accident.

Cut to six months later and the friends finally make it to the cabin. Jonesy, having survived the accident, seems normal but tells his friends that the accident was caused by a vision of their childhood friend Duddits. He doesn't blame Duddits for the accident but cannot explain the strange vision and especially how he survived the horrific accident.

This setup is very intriguing with good chemistry among the four actors and the character development and the use of the telepathy is very engaging. It entices the audience into what one hopes is an examination of these characters and theie abilities. Unfortunately, this is where Dreamcatcher flies off the rails and turns into yet another sci-fi/ horror schlockfest.

It is at this point that we meet Morgan Freeman and his insane General Kurtz. Kurtz is tracking the crash of an alien ship that contains aliens intent on spreading a virus that could wipe out humanity. As Kurtz searches for the ship, our four friends are witnesses to some freaky stuff. While Henry and Pete go on a beer run, Jonesy and Beaver take in a hunter who was lost in the woods. The hunter is very ill, as the number of loud farts coming out of him attest. It's not long before Jonesy and Beaver find out what's wrong with the guy, in a scene that makes John Hurt's ET indigestion in Alien look tame.

Now with Morgan Freeman in the film it would seem impervious to being bad, but oh how wrong you are. In fact, it is Freeman who provides many of the unintentionally funny moments of the film. Woefully miscast as a crazy man, Freeman should be playing the good guy role that went to Tom Sizemore. After all, who could possibly play crazy opposite Tom Sizemore? It’s worth noting that naming Freeman's General Kurtz is a cute little allusion to Apocolypse Now.

I mentioned just how faithful Dreamcatcher is to it's source material and though I haven't read it, I'm sure it is. What so many people don't realize about Stephen King's writing is, is how blatantly uncommercial it is. Oh sure it sells millions of copies, but that doesn't tell you how many people bought the book and were unable to make it all the way through it. This is the problem in faithfully adapting a King novel because most of his novels are far more gruesome than anyone would ever want to film.

Dreamcatcher, in being faithful to the original, took a risk that the disgusting elements of the writing and the outrageous plot twists would cause audiences to turn away or even walk out. Props for taking the risk, however it failed miserably.

Apparently Dreamcatcher isn't one of King's best because if this is a faithful adaptation it's an absolute mess. From ridiculous looking rejects from the Alien movies, to the cringe inducing dialogue, Dreamcatcher is at times a painful moviegoing experience. Schlocky sci-fi/horror on par with Resident Evil and Jason Goes to Space, or whatever the hell they called that Friday the 13th dud.

It's a real shame because the opening 35-40 minutes are pretty good and Director Lawrence Kasdan does a good job of building suspense throughout the beginning of the film. Why he drifted into horror movie cliches and sci-fi nastiness at a certain point in the film is maddening. It's a shame Kasdan decided to remain faithful to King when a director of his skill could have taken the strong start and taken the story in a more interesting direction.

Movie Review: The Sweetest Thing

The Sweetest Thing (2002) 

Directed by Roger Kumble 

Written by Nancy Pimental 

Starring Cameron Diaz, Thomas Jane, Selma Blair, Christina Applegate

Release Date April 12th, 2002

The battle for the title of Worst Film of 2002 is a three-film race so far. There is John Mctiernan's expression of audience hatred, Rollerball, Dominique Swain's spiraling career suicide in Tart, and now Cameron Diaz's inexplicable The Sweetest Thing. This bizarre, gross, deeply failing comedy somehow manages to make the terrific Cameron Diaz look like a terrible person. That should tell you all you need to know about The Sweetest Thing. 

The Sweetest Thing begins in documentary style with guys talking straight to the camera about a girl named Christina who broke their hearts. This pre-credit sequence seems tacked on as if the director realized that the script didn't bother to introduce the character Cameron Diaz is playing so he had to do something desperate to get some exposition into the movie to provide comic credentials for Diaz's character. 

Once we are into the actual film we meet Christina (Cameron Diaz), your typical flighty movie chick dancing in the streets of San Francisco. Where are these pixie-ish girls who dance in the streets with no regard for the world around them? Oh right, mental hospitals.  Christina and her friend Courtney (Christina Applegate) meet up at Christina's apartment where their friend Jane (Selma Blair) is crying over a lost boyfriend. Christina and Courtney give her the typical advice, forget about Mr. Right and go get Mr. Right Now. How clever! 

The three friends go to a club where Christina meets Peter Donahue (Thomas Jane). Initially, Christina and Peter are adversarial but then they keep meeting and grow to like each other. Peter eventually invites Christina to a party but she decides not to go. Why? Well, if she goes, we wouldn't have this idiot plot where Christina has to try and find this great guy she met a this party. Oh, and she didn't get his phone number either for the same reason. 

One of my movie pet peeves is when an entire film hinges on a situation easily resolved by a brief conversation but left unresolved in service of the plot. In The Sweetest Thing all they had to do is what anyone in that situation would have done, either go to the party or exchange phone numbers. If they did that though we wouldn't have the lame road sequence where the girls have wacky things happen, like Christina's discovery of what a glory hole is. Oh so clever.

I doubt the glory hole has ever been used for a good laugh in a film, there is probably a reason for that, but The Sweetest Thing doesn't stop there. The film includes a sequence where the girls start a restaurant singalong about penis size, and poor abused Selma Blair has a scene where let's just say something gets stuck somewhere.

Writer Nancy Pimental and Director Roger Kumble want to roll around in the same mud as There's Something About Mary and the American Pie movies, but they forget what it was that made those movies funny. There's Something About Mary and American Pie 1 & 2 were funny because the disgusting jokes were in context and framed against characters who earned our sympathy. The Sweetest Thing never bothers to introduce the characters, they expect that we will like them because we like the stars. That was not enough for me.

The Sweetest Thing is legitimately hard to watch. Rather than relating to the characters I was embarrassed for the stars trapped in the film’s humiliating and stupid situations. The Sweetest Thing is a complete embarrassment. 

Movie Review: The Punisher

The Punisher (2004) 

Directed by Jonathan Hensleigh 

Written by Jonathan Hensleigh 

Starring Thomas Jane, John Travolta, Rebecca Romijn 

Release Date: April 16th, 2004 

Published April 15th, 2004 

Previous to Avi Arad’s days as CEO, Marvel Comics made a number of bad deals involving the film rights to its comics. The Fantastic Four was sold to Roger Corman's production company (yes that Roger Corman). Do we want to remember those awful Captain America and Spiderman TV movies? Ugh. And who can forget 1989's The Punisher with Dolph Lundgren? Well most people have forgotten that, thankfully. Now The Punisher has a new life on film and the best that can be said is that it's better than the Dolph Lundgren version.

Thomas Jane is the new Frank Castle, a special forces trained FBI Agent who has just wrapped up his final case with his own faked death. Unfortunately, in a case where he hoped no one would be killed, a mobster’s son was taken down. The mobster, Howard Saint (John Travolta) is of course none too pleased with this and sets out to find the man responsible. With little effort he finds Castle is not really dead and sets out to kill him, and at his wife Livia's (Laura Elena Herring) suggestion, kill Castle's entire family as well.

Saint sends his top thug Quentin Glass (Will Patton) and a large goon squad to Puerto Rico where the entire Castle clan, cousins, and uncles, and grandparents, and so on and so on, all just happen to be gathered. The gang kills the entire family then chases down Frank's fleeing wife and child and brutally run them down. Then it's Frank's turn as he arrives just in time to see his wife and child die and then get the living crap kicked out of himself by the bad guys. In typical bad guy fashion, rather than just shooting Frank in the head the baddies plot an elaborate torture that Frank manages to escape. Well if they did the smart thing there would be no movie.

Castle does survive and soon is back in Tampa ready to make Howard Saint pay for killing his family. Along the way Frank hooks up with three oddballs who share a rundown tenement apartment building with him. They are Joan (Rebecca Romijn) a waitress with a taste for the wrong kind of man, Bumpo (comedian John Pinette) an effeminate overweight chef and Spacker Dave an overly pierced slacker. They try to draw Frank into their circle but other than protecting them from evil, Frank has little interest in them.

Frank's sole focus is an overly elaborate revenge on Howard Saint. If it weren't overly elaborate, again there would be no movie, but this is quite unnecessarily melodramatic and prolonged. The revenge involves Saint, his wife and Quentin Glass, a simple misunderstanding, and a fake fire hydrant. Where does one even acquire a fake fire hydrant? I'm not sure but it seems quite handy, unless there were an actual fire. It's all very melodramatic until the final 10 minutes when it devolves into a massive crunching bore of gunfire and the unnecessary use of way too much C4 explosive.

Director Jonathan Hensleigh obviously learned a lot from scripting Armageddon and producing Con Air for Jerry Bruckheimer. He learned how to use massive explosions to grand excess. He learned that you can never under-use gunfire and that a movie doesn't have to make sense as long as you kill, maim or explode someone every other scene. Not that this approach doesn't have it's moments but as every Bruckheimer movie shows, the formula grows tired quickly and so it does become quickly tiresome in The Punisher.

To the credit of Thomas Jane, The Punisher's belligerence is seemingly not his fault. Jane's performance is perfectly calibrated to the films dark, humorless tone. Jane's Punisher is brooding, tough, and without a trace of wit. Which seems to be exactly what the movie was going for if you watch all that surrounds his performance. Jane sells the character all the way even as he is forced to become less and less human and more of a horror film cartoon. Rambo crossed with Jason Vorhees.

John Travolta is wearing his Swordfish toupee which means he is in sneering bad guy autopilot. Nothing new for Travolta who grows more and more bored with each subsequent role these days. Hopefully his return to playing Chilli Palmer in Be Cool will revive his love of acting. In The Punisher Travolta gives up about half way through and figuratively rolls his eyes through the final 45 minutes of the film.

As bad as this movie truly is I must admit that I enjoyed some of it's over the top violence. The films major, one on one, fight scene between Tom Jane and pro wrestler Kevin Nash, the seven footer simply called The Russian in the film, brings the film’s only light moments as Jane marvels at the size of his opponent and his own numerous failed attempts to hurt the big man. It's kinda fun but it's been done, Stallone made beating up the bigger man a staple of his act back in the mid-eighties.

The film’s final violent set piece looks like an attempt to burn whatever remained of the film’s budget. I swear, it's as if they were told they had to spend a certain amount and nothing less so they just blew up whatever remaining cash they had in an orgy of explosions and gunfire.

At two hours and ten minutes, The Punisher is punishing on the audience. Repetitiously violent in between it's overly imaginative and melodramatic plots, The Punisher would be a candidate for worst of the year if Thomas Jane weren't such a pro at selling this big. dumb, loud plot. It's better than the Dolph Lundgren version of The Punisher, but staring at a blank screen for ninety minutes would be more entertaining than that picture. I would hope that the producers were aiming for more than bettering that film. Sadly that turns out to be the film’s only accomplishment.