FILM REVIEW OF ''JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE" (2017)

Dwayne Johnson won’t win an Oscar for Jake Kasdan’s “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” (*** OUT OF ****), but he portrays a riotous character far from anything he has done before this body switch saga.  Basically, the Rock ridicules himself with a straight-face throughout this PG-13, 119-minute, action-adventure escapade that rarely takes itself seriously.  As captivating as the Rock is as a khaki-clad Indiana Jones fortune hunter, co-star Jack Black overshadows him with his own bizarre character.  Just as “Orange County” director Jake Kasdan lets Johnson poke fun at himself as a nerd cringing inside the physique of a bodybuilder, he has taken it a step farther with Jack Black who ends up in the body of female character.  Scratching your head yet?  These are examples of the sidesplitting shenanigans that underline this frivolous film.  Abetting Jack Black and the Rock in this superficial slapstick are comedian Kevin Hart and actress Karen Gillian.  They inhabit characters with whom they share zip.  These likable characters make the preposterous premise entertaining.  A mysterious videogame console uploads four high school teens and turns them into their gaming avatars.  Each comes equipped with skills designed to aid them in an epic scavenger hunt. The time frame of the hunt depends on the participants’ luck.  Not only do a quartet of writers--Chris McKenna, Jeff Pinker, Scott Rosenberg, and Erik Sommers--segue this sequel to director Joe Johnston's earlier “Jumanji” (1995), but they also have reimagined it for contemporary audiences with no patience for board games.  “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” amounts to sheer, harebrained hokum from fade-in to fadeout.  Everything about this farce is far-fetched. Nothing slows down the headlong momentum, however, during these madcap melodramatics.  Like the original Robin Williams movie, this “Jumanji” contains a similar frame story, but the writers spend more time on the subsequent story about the four high school kids. Superior computer-generated imagery in some truly outlandish scenes surpasses the primitive CGI in the 1995 film.  You’ll never forget the crocodile scene!  Moreover, a clever premise allows our heroes and heroines to cheat death like immortals! 

“Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” starts on the beach where the 1995 movie heroes buried the board game.  In the prologue, a teen digs it up and takes it home.  While he is asleep, the durable board game repurposes itself into a video game console.  When he plays it, the game hijacks him from his cozy bedroom to an alternate dimension.  Twenty years elapse, and the main characters are introduced.  Principal Bentley (Marc Evan Jackson of “Kong: Skull Island”) busts beanpole gamer and germaphobe Spencer Gilpin (Alex Wolff of “My Friend Dahmer”) for plagiarism.  Spencer wrote an academic paper for his friend, star football player Anthony 'Fridge' Johnson (Ser'Darius Blain of “Camp X-Ray”), that Spencer had earlier submitted as his own to his gimlet-eyed History teacher.  Meanwhile, an annoyed teacher catches self-absorbed, social media-addicted Bethany Walker (Madison Iseman of “Laid in America”) on her smart phone during an exam.  Finally, an introverted nobody, Martha Kaply (Morgan Turner of “Remember Me”), refuses to exercise during P.E., and she winds up in Bentley’s office.  Bentley lets them off the hook with detention.  Sounds like “The Breakfast Club?”  Not for long! They must clean up a room littered with trash.  Fridge stumbles onto that mysterious console.  The four students decide to play this mysterious “Mortal Combat” game.  Instead, they are morphed into it and emerge on the far side as their avatars.  Pusillanimous Spencer is now expedition leader Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson) with massive muscles.  Towering football champion Fridge finds himself shrunk drastically into pint-sized zoologist Moose Finbar (Kevin Hart of “Central Intelligence”) who dreads everything.  Much to her horror, sexy Bethany takes the form of obese, balding, middle-aged Professor Shelly Oberon (Jack Black of “King Kong”) whose expertise is maps.  Shy Martha becomes butt-kicking martial arts sensation Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan of “Guardians of the Galaxy”) with a flair for ‘dance fighting.’

“Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” doesn’t stray far from the vintage Robin Williams “Jumanji.”  In the original, the son of a shoe manufacturer played the haunted board game, and he vanished into it like so much paranormal dust into a board.  Unfortunately, he didn’t escape from the magic board game universe as easily as he wanted.  After he returned to reality, he contends with a big-game hunter from the past stalking him in his hometown.  The hunter traded in his antique rifle for a fully automatic assault rifle and lays waste to modern society as he searches for the hero.  Later, a stampede of enormous zoo animals trashed the town.  Nevertheless, the son triumphs over adversity.  The “Jumanji” sequel differs in some respects from its predecessor.  More characters play the game, and teamwork pays off as their best strategy.  They are dropped from the sky into the jungle “Predator” style and ponder the three hashtag tattoos on their wrists that indicate their number of lives. Indeed, our heroes and heroines can die a couple of times, heightening the suspense, when their heroics aren’t amusing us.  The best thing about the new “Jumanji” is its gallery of sympathetic heroes and heroines. Smolder Bravestone, Moose Finbar, Professor Shelly Oberon, and Ruby Roundhouse are as charismatic as the actors and actresses.  They are riddled from within by the guilt of their real-life counterparts.  For example, you’ll laugh at the Rock when he cowers before Kevin Hart. Remember, the man inside Smolder is Spencer, and Spencer is a medicating nerd. The scene where Bethany coaches Ruby about the rudiments of flirting is hysterical.  Happily, Kasdan and his writers have given everybody a scene or more to shine. Ultimately, the success of “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” is such that Jake Kasdan’s comic cliffhanger may constitute more than a sequel but also a reboot!  “Jumanji” has coined $883 million plus worldwide from a $90 million budget.  No studio would dare produce such a blockbuster and sit on a franchise. 

FILM REVIEW OF ''EMPIRE STATE" (2013)

“Empire State” (** OUT OF ****) qualifies as an interesting but mediocre armored car company heist epic.  Ostensibly, “Fighting” director Dito Montiel and “Breach” scenarist Adam Mazer failed to take advantage of a fantastic opportunity to make a first class caper film.  The real-life incident itself constituted something of a landmark in crime annuals.  According to the Associated Press, the $11-million robbery of the Sentry Armored Car amounted to “the largest cash robbery in U.S. history.”  Furthermore, the AP pointed out this robbery surpassed the December 1978 robbery of $5.8 million in cash and jewelry taken by thieves from the Lufthansa cargo area at Kennedy International Airport.  Martin Scorsese immortalized the Lufthansa heist in his crime magnum opus “Goodfellas” with Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta.  Meantime, Montiel assembled an enviable cast including Liam Hemsworth, Michael Angarano, Dwayne Johnson, Emma Roberts, Paul Ben-Victor, Michael Rispoli, and Roger Guenveur Smith.  “Empire State” generates sufficient atmosphere, but the plot is curiously lackluster.  Montiel and Mazer neither made a semi-historical crime reconstruction (the loot hasn’t been recovered) or a fictional counterpoint to it exploiting history as a jumping off point. 

Contemporary crime thrillers often implicate audiences because we are rooting for the charismatic perpetrators.  Initially, the protagonist, Chris Potamitis (Liam Hemsworth of “The Hunger Games”), wins our sympathy for three reasons.  First, he cannot land a job with the NYPD owing to a penny-ante marijuana arrest at a rock concert years ago.  Second, his Greek-born father, Tommy (Paul Ben-Victor of “True Romance”), loses his blue-collar job as a janitor after a quarrel in the toilet of a local bar with the owner.  Third, Chris is outraged by the cavalier treatment of a fellow employee at an armored car company days after he is hired as a guard.  No sooner has our hero gotten a job with the Empire Armored Car Company than he watches in horror as his friendly mentor, Tony (Michael Rispoli of “Pain & Gain”), dies during a botched robbery attempt.  Tony’s assailant shoots the family man several times in the stomach during a struggle.  Earlier, Tony ridiculed his employer’s slipshod security measures.  He showed Chris how easy it would be to steal from the company vault.  Tony explains that the owners never count the money after they have stashed on pallets in their vault with a harmless German Sheppard prowling the premises.  Furthermore, he reveals that the owners have been known to skim the money entrusted to them.  Chris is astonished at the sight of $25 million in money bags scattered haphazardly in the vault.  Later, after Tony dies, the company welshes on its promise to pay $50-thousand his widow.  Instead, as Chris learns afterward, they have paid her a measly $5-thousand.  Like a modern-day Robin Hood, Chris steals enough loot from the company to pay off the widow.  

At this point, Chris makes several mistakes. First, he flaunts his haul to an arrogant, conceited childhood pal, Eddie (Michael Angarano of “Almost Famous”), who has an unfortunate habit of shooting off his mouth..  Eddie gives new meaning to “loose lips sinking ships.”  Chris and Eddie blow the rest of the loot that our hero stole on booze and babes.  Loquacious Eddie babbles to a couple of low-level street hooligans from the neighborhood.  The temptation of easy money is too much for them to pass up.  Second, Chris loses our sympathy when he agrees to rob the company.  He is giving into his own greed with no other reason that avarice itself.  Ironically, the thugs in a van who tried to rob Empire earlier now attempt to break into the Empire facility one evening.  This unexpected turn of events takes Chris by surprise.  Eddie and his hooligan friends were planning to knock off the place at the same time.  Previously, when these thugs killed Tony and shot up Chris’s bullet-proof vest, the NYPD dispatched Detective Ransome (Dwayne Johnson of “Pain & Gain”) to investigate.  Ransome and his partner show up again when the thugs hit Empire and a small gunfight ensues with Chris entering the fray at the last minute.  He manages to kill one of the thugs as the latter was about to ice Ransome.  Chris basks in brief fame in the local press, but Eddie goads him to take advantage of the Empire’s slack security.  

The robbery that follows shows Chris in an unsavory light.  Eddie smashes his way through the ceiling and Chris coaches him about how to wear his apparel so that a security camera will not record his face.  Eventually, Eddie has to smash his gun over Chris’s head to make it look like Chris was the victim rather than the mastermind of the robbery.  Naturally, Ransome is back on the case and keeping tabs on our hero.  Eddie and his mobster pal get into trouble and the FBI enter the case.  It is only a matter of time before Eddie goes so berserk that Chris’s father Tommy intervenes and the NYPD arrest everybody, but the money is never found.  “Empire State” implies that the loot is hidden in a statue that Chris gave his mother.  Nevertheless, nobody ever reaps the rewards of the robbery.  Ironically, Chris Potamitis served as a co-producer on “Empire State.”  He served a brief sentence for his involvement in the crime.  

Clocking in at 94 minutes, “Empire State” generates neither enough urgency nor sufficient suspense.  The hero degenerates from a Robin Hood to a hopeless moron.  Dwayne Johnson shows up 22 minutes into the action then checks out and returns another twenty minutes or so later but lurks for the most part on the periphery.  Emma Roberts plays a restaurant waitress and appears to be Chris’ quasi-love interest, but the sparks never fly between them.  The shoot-out at Empire Armored is noisy but never thrilling.  The worst thing about “Empire State” is that Montiel had everything necessary to make a classic heist caper.  Mazer’s screenplay wavers between a Robin Hood crime thriller where the underdogs triumph over a corrupt business to a comedy of errors where idiots allow their own stupidity and greed undermine them.  “Empire State” boasts polished production values, a solid cast, and historic precedent, but it shoots itself in the foot with its sloppy approach to its subject matter.  This is a deplorably missed opportunity for everybody connected with this movie.

FILM REVIEW OF "PAIN & GAIN" (2013)

“Pain and Gain” (*** OUT OF ****) represents a drastic change for blockbuster director Michael Bay.  Typically, Bay makes spectacular, over-the-top, plot-driven extravaganzas, with traditional heroes and villains.  During his eighteen years in Hollywood, Bay has earned a reputation as a lucrative hack with the “Transformers” trilogy, “Armageddon,” “Pearl Harbor,” “The Island,” and “The Rock.”   What this character-driven melodrama lacks in mind-blowing spectacle and traditional heroes, "Pain & Gain" compensates for with a story so weird you have to wonder.  Indeed, this gritty, class-conscious, blue-collar, crime thriller unreels like a bizarre comedy of errors.  Mentally challenged, mesomorphic, murderers prey on cretinous victims begging for the worst, and the authorities wind up doing a double-take.  “Captain America: The First Avenger” co-scribes Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely along with Bay have adapted a series of “Miami New Times” articles that Florida-based columnist Pete Collins penned about the notorious Sun Gym gang.  Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson, and Anthony Mackie are cast as three, sadistic, steroid-shooting, bodybuilders who rival the Three Stooges in idiocy.  This wholly unsavory threesome inflicts pain, i.e., violence, death, and dismemberment, on their unfortunate victims to gain their share of the American Dream.  Accurately enough, Bay has described “Pain & Gain” as a synthesis of “Fargo” and “Pulp Fiction.”  “It's a dark comedy,” Bay explains, “and it's mostly true."  Bay shoots the works literally to give this minor movie about a bunch of nobodies a stunning, larger-than-life quality.  Most of what this trio does is pretty appalling, but it is so appalling you have to fight the urge of laugh.  Law and order rules Miami, but the authorities were indifferent to the depredations of the Sun Gym gang.  The Miami Police allowed their own prejudices toward Colombians to blind them to the threat that the bodybuilders posed.  The first victim of the Sun Gym gang spent time in Colombia, but he never smuggled narcotics.  Bay deserves credit for getting back to the basics with this hilarious but abrasive police procedural that is reminiscent of his “Bad Boys” movies.  Bay tells this wacky tale from two perspectives, alternating between Ed Harris’ retired private eye and Mark Wahlberg’s bossy bodybuilder.

Wahlberg has a field day as the real-life person Daniel Lugo who rhapsodized about fitness.  The actor looks like somebody qualified to be a personal trainer.  He saunters around confidently with muscles bulging, and he isn’t shy about them.  Initially, Lupo served time for swindling senior citizens out of their savings.  Now, he has gotten his life back on track, enough so to convince gym manager John Mese (Rob Corddry of “Hot Tub Time Machine”) to hire him.  Daniel promises Mese that membership will triple under his tenure.  Surprisingly, Lupo lives up to his claims.  Indeed, Daniel can do no wrong, until he decides to take Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie of “Gangster Squad”) and Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson of “The Tooth Fairy”) under his wings as personal trainers, too.  He learns Doyle has done time for cocaine, but the massively built Doyle has forsaken liquor and found Jesus.  When Adrian isn’t pumping iron at the gym, he has a lowly job at a market.  More often than not, Adrian cannot pay his rent on time.  Poor Adrian stabs steroid shots into his body, but he suffers from erectile dysfunction.  He meets a sweet nurse at a doctor’s office, Robin Peck (Rebel Wilson of “Pitch Perfect”), who assures him that his condition will improve.  These guys are pals for life.  Essentially, Daniel behaves like Moe, the Alpha male of the Three Stooges, while Adrian and Paul are respectively Larry and Curley.

One of Daniel’s clients is Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub of “Galaxy Quest”); a wealthy but conceited business man who owns a Schlotzsky's Deli and rarely has a kind word for anybody.  Everybody detests Victor.  Daniel feels nothing but contempt for Victor.  Nevertheless, he envies Victor’s success.  Daniel convinces Adrian and a reluctant Doyle to help him abduct and torture Kershaw.  Daniel believes Victor will capitulate under pressure and sign away everything just to survive the ordeal.  Eventually, Victor capitulates.  Daniel and his cronies get Victor to sign all the papers, and Daniel convinces a notary public to validate the documents.  Incredibly, they cannot kill Victor.  It’s not that they lack the courage. Daniel and his cronies are too inept.  They try to kill him, but Victor defies Daniel’s best laid plans.  Eventually, after playing hiding-go-seek around Miami from the Sun Gym Gang, Victor convinces a private eye to investigate his strange case.  While Ed DuBois (Ed Harris of “The Rock”) is investigating the gang, Daniel and his cronies are living high, wide, and handsome.  Basically, they got away with everything Victor owned, but they didn’t put him on ice.  Unfortunately, Daniel’s accomplices need more cash like the money they extorted from Victor.  In the end, their greed sinks them when they try to pull the same stunt on a porn entrepreneur and everything goes wrong.

The revelation in “Pain and Gain” is Dwayne Johnson’s performance as a born-again, low-life coke snorter.  You’ve never seen the Rock like he is in “Pain & Gain.”  Coming on the heels of his earlier opus “Snitch,” Johnson has broadened the range of roles for his gallery of characters.  Aside from Johnson, who resembles the Rock of Gibraltar, Wahlberg and Mackie have bulked up considerably.  A brawny, bossy Wahlberg never misses a chance to flex his muscles and behave like a tyrant.  Wahlberg hasn’t done anything like “Pain and Gain.”  This muscular authenticity on the part of the stars provides “Pain & Gain” with a wealth of creditability.  Of course, Bay and company have tampered with the crime, but their alterations don’t devastate the outlandish source material.  In real life, the man that Dwayne Johnson plays neither robbed an armored truck nor got his big toe shot off by a sharp-shooting cop.  Meantime, Tony Shalhoub, Rebel Wilson, and Ed Harris round out a uniformly excellent cast, and Rebel steals every scene she has with anybody, even when it’s the heavily armed Miami Dade SWAT team.  Altogether, despite its irreverent comedy, “Pain & Gain” may turn off Bay’s target audience with its excessive length, R-rating, and unsavory characters.