As an avid movie buff, I'm up for dumb fun as much as I am for intelligent storytelling. Where I have the most issues are movies that want to be guilty pleasures, but are just too lazy to merit much effort.
Witness RAMPAGE.
Once again, you can almost hear the breathless pitch for the movie. "It's The Rock, and giant animals made big by some crashing space rocks and we'll have them all end up in Chicago and trash the city, like a big Transformers movie, but with animals!!"
zzzzzzzz...
Reteaming with his "San Andreas"director Brad Peyton, but creating none of the summer-movie enjoyment of that film, Dwayne Johnson stars as Davis,a primatoligist with a big heart and even bigger biceps.
When a piece of dangerous space trash (fostered by some of the most stereotypical bad guys since Boris & Natasha) conveniently lands in the cage of Davis' favorite albino gorilla named George, the creature starts growing at an alarming rate.
Naomi Harris (our new, terrific Moneypenny in the Craig OO7 films) is Dr Kate Caldwell, helping Davis track down his newly Kong like buddy.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen, The Walking Dead) is the best thing in the movie as the most no-nonsense government man since Tommy Lee Jones chased Harrison Ford in "The Fugitive". He's funny, actually seems to be interacting with the story and keeps us guessing.
Which is more than can be said for the plot, which is so predictable, I knew exactly what was going to happen even BEFORE the previews gave it away.
There's a giant alligator and a giant wolf "My what BIG Teeth you have!" and its all just a silly mess.
When my grandson is a little older, I bet he iikes it, but there are too many inappropriate hand gestures and too much violence to be right for the mentally targeted age of the screenplay, which I think is around 7 or 8 years old.
Dwayne Johnson is the closest thing we have to an old fashioned action movie star. I enjoy a lot of his films, but this isn't one of them.
The last 30 minutes is another endless orgy of destruction and mayhem, like we've seen in every Transformer movie in recent memory.
What a waste.
Silly, predictable and lazy, RAMPAGE gets a D.
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