With the latest installment from the second half of Michael Bay’s brain (Brett Ratner), I went into the theater thinking, “There’s no way anyone could destroy the campy-fun wu shu of Jackie Chan nor the loud but original humor (yes, I said original) of Chris Tucker, right?”
As I left, walking over the sticky floor, I asked myself the question again. The answer, to my dismay, was an emphatic “yes”. And Brett Ratner somehow managed to do it.
Now before I take to the move like Michael Vick to an under-performing dog, let me start by saying I like the Rush Hour series and I would rather see a Brett Ratner POS than a Michael Bay POS. The reason is that, while Bay puts absolutely zero time into true character development, Ratner at least attempts to make some connection between the audience and the characters. He tries to create characters that have more substance than Kate Moss, so that when Lee (played in his usual way by Chan) and Carter (played by a still-amusing Tucker) part ways in the middle of the movie, the audience…almost, possibly, if they try really hard…feels a little sad at the break-up. So at least Ratner has that going for him. But even that can be attributed to the two actors and how well they play off of each other on screen.
The performance by Chan has it’s usual over-the-top chop sockey flair and hearing him speaking English is still the funniest gag in the movie. Tucker, though he’s decidedly calmer and slightly fatter than in the first two of the series, is a bright spot in a rather dull movie as well. If it hadn’t been for the pair of stars and their weird chemistry, I’d have absolutely nothing good to say about this movie.
Now for the bad…Where to start…
For one, I thought the point of being an action-junkie guru was that you could pull it off with flair. Ratner shows almost no action know-how. Instead of steady, well-shot action sequences, he goes the route of Transformers and masks his action in cuts and pacing. Apparently the above-the-line people decided that instead of the fun fighting sequences and snappy dialogue of the first two, this time around they were going to flood the audience with unrealistic (although impressive) stunts. Now if only Chan really did all his own stunts instead of lying about it.
Aside from the horrendous direction and lame exposition included in the script, the writers of this brainless waste of 2 hours (Jeff Nathanson and Ross LaManna) forgot a major rule of sequels: The material must present something new. It’s the same problem that hindered the early threequels this year (Pirates, Shrek & Spider-Man) and improved others (Bourne Ultimatum). This movie follows the former, including rehashing exact jokes from from the previous movies. That’s a no-no and it makes for a feeling of deja vu while you’re butt is in the seat.
I hate to give movies a totally negative review, but with a movie like this it takes more effort to come up with positives than it does negatives. This means it is a bad movie. If it’s easy to justify the bad and list the good, it’s good. This one takes too much effort to say it’s a good movie.
In fact, it took so much effort to write those first two paragraphs that this isn’t just a bad movie. It’s a tired, well-worn remake of the first and second movies. No…I take that back. I enjoyed those movies. This is just a piece of s***.
There are a few bright spots, Chan and Tucker’s chemistry mainly, that make this movie slightly more bearable than “Norbit” or “Basic Instinct 2“. But let’s be honest. This movie is everything that is wrong with Hollywood and near the bottom of movies they have produced this year. This movie is an embarrassment to the previous two and a TOTAL embarrassment to the entire genre of buddy-cop movies that includes the “Lethal Weapon” series, “Hot Fuzz“, even “Se7en“.
Maybe it’s time to give the buddy cop movie a rest. Maybe that way people won’t have to ask the all-important question: “Can someone really destroy this movie?”
Oh, that and maybe Ratner shouldn’t be allowed to put his nasty hands on another third movie of a trilogy and destroy another franchise.
(* 1/2) Jessicas out of four. This movie was just above dog s***. You’d need Alba and Biel, with a cameo by Simpson, and perhaps some gratuitous nudity from all 3 for this to be worth watching.
AK
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