MovieChat Forums > Last Action Hero (1993) Discussion > This movie is unfortunate

This movie is unfortunate

posted a month ago by avortac4 (3668)
2 replies | jump to latest

OK, since people don't get it, I will do you ALL a favor and do my best to analyze this movie more fully, explaining why it doesn't work and why it gets this 'lukewarm' response.

I don't care what movies it was 'against', I am going to just analyze the movie 'as it is'.

First, relying TOO MUCH on the star power. Getting Arnold for your movie is absolutely fantastic, but you shouldn't let that AFFECT the story, editing, lighting or any aspect of you telling your great story passionately. Having Arnold as their star was probably such a 'big relief' they felt they can relax on other stuff and NOT TRY SO HARD.

Second, the concept and idea itself are both solid. A movie that makes fun of action movies, by displaying a jarring juxtaposition between 'movie world' and 'real world'. It's actually almost brilliant, a premise that has not been used enough ('Cool World' and some others ABSOLUTELY butchered this idea).

Third, the movie is technically polished. It's very good, there is NOTHING wrong with the technical aspects. The musics are good, the visuals are good, the camerawork is good, acting, lighting, IT IS ALL GOOD. It's all absolutely good, I don't think ANYONE can claim otherwise without KNOWING they are lying.

This might be its pitfall, because there are so many easy-to-see 'good things' about this movie, it's easy to just fall into the comfort of 'it's all good' without fully realizing what's going on.

It's frankly quite amazing - maybe unique! - that a movie has THIS many things go SO WELL and be done so well, be crafted so well, and yet fail.

When I talk about failure, I usually don't care about the 'box office' or such things, I care about whether the movie is good, entertaining, energetic, atmospheric and so on.

Fourth, there are SO many good 'jokes' and good 'humor' about action movies and such in this movie, it's what a viewer will remember the most. Stallone in T2? Only pretty women in 'movie California'? The movie 'weirdness' being so easily explained away, even though from our perspective, they ARE weird..

It's hard to think a movie is bad, when it has THIS MUCH GOOD stuff in it.

It's like a sandwitch that has completely perfect ingredients - the only problem being, when you bite into it, it tastes either really bad or at least very bland.

It's almost a miracle, it's hard to fathom, it's hard to understand. 'Everything works' (sort of), lots of charisma, good stuff, great star power, great jokes, good humor, even the kid's acting performance.. WHAT the heck more could audiences want?

This movie is unfortunate exactly because it's smiled upon by so many 'movie Gods' - SO many stars aligned to bring SO many good 'happy accidents' and such.

The problem is, the movie is like a deer frozen in headlights - it's going to be dead in a few seconds, but just before it happens, it looks really beautiful.

This movie froze instead of exploding, it stopped expanding once people knew it's gonna have all this good stuff in it, so no one wanted to put in their best effort anymore. Sure, parts of the movie are SO excellent, maybe even most movies (and certainly many) are put to shame by those parts.

The thing is, no matter HOW polished your movie is, if it does _NOT_DARE_ do anything new, good, interesting, exciting, or VISIONARY... it's going to fall flat on its face.

This movie never was, has never been, isn't, and will never be 'bad'.

The problem is exactly that - this movie did not take RISKS that could have made it bad. It played it SO safe so it could be 'good', that it landed SQUARELY on 'mediocre'.

That is the problem with this movie - no matter how many mediocre jokes it throws at the viewer, no matter how inconsistently 'weird' it is (the dog pyramid-scene does not fit in with so many other scenes), it never rises towards 'greatness' - it remains steadily in the 'mediocre' level, and is TOO COMFORTABLE with that.

It doesn't make Arnold do CRAZY things - just 'the usual action movie trope things, now, laugh, damnit!'.

It doesn't make the kid have an amazing personality, he's a STOCK KID that could be from ANY movie.

It doesn't make the villain.. well, you get the idea. The villain is probably the best part of this movie, his acting performance is absolutely engaging, making me want to see him in more movies. The problem is, he wasn't given THAT much... he does a wonderful job, but he doesn't fly into the sky to break an interdimensional barrier to tri-locate in more interesting dimensions.

He plays a villain, and that's it.

This movie relies too much on 'safe things' to break new ground, so the result is FLAT and UNINTERESTING - the viewer can PREDICT too much of what goes on, and the jokes land a bit stale as the result of that. It's like one joke that is stretched too long without being anything new to it. It just becomes boring and predictable.

I could write pages on how predictable this movie is, but I rather focus on the OTHER nail on the coffin; the 'real world'

[–] avortac4 (3668) a month ago

Anyone thinking about this kid and his everyday life, will be shocked. What happens to him is TOO scary, too shocking, too 'real', too gritty, gloomy, depressing and shocking.

He should not have to go through all that. Also, WHAT is with this misandristic trope of 'father always dies'? Can't ANY kid have a good, full family in these movies? EVER?

The 'real world' is when this movie ABSOLUTELY stops being funny. There's nothing funny about any of the scenes that happen in the 'real world', except maybe a couple of the 'Arnold Brownschweiger' moments.

So most of the 'real world' is a horrible dystopia with always rainy skies and whatnot. That is jarring and scary, depressing and off-putting.

This movie tries to 'have it all', but ends up having nothing.

Maybe the LAST nail on the coffin is that the movie is so on-the-nose with everything. You basically KNOW what you are going to get, and it keeps going like that for a long, long time. You know how people are going to react to things, and yep, that's how they DO react.

There are not many surprises or interesting scenes you couldn't predict or think of before they happen. You have your typical Mary Sue scene, check.. just because this movie tries to be clever by having a character AWARE of the tropes, does not make those tropes any less exhausting and stupid.

This movie COULD have been amazing, but instead, it ends up being 'too safe for its own good', and it fails because it falls flat on its flace after expecting to be levitated by audiences and then jumping in the air.

This movie is unfortunate, because it COULD have been absolutely fantastic, but ended up being 'paint-by-the-numbers' romp that you will forget about ten minutes after seeing it. All you will remember is a couple of fun jokes and interesting differences between the 'real world' and 'movie world', and that's about it.

It COULD have been 'Back to the Future' great, where people will endlessly discuss it after the movie is over.. so sad.

[–] cv1cv (460) a month ago

BEWARE! Avortac4 is a troll trying to waste everyone's time with such idiotic comments. Look at his posts. He doesn't think anything in any film makes sense. His post may seem like it makes sense in the first sentence or two. But he always quickly wanders off into a completely idiotic idea, and then writes a wall of text that makes no sense. And his sole purpose is to waste your time, thinking he's cute for doing so. Don't feed the troll. If you write a comment, you're giving this troll EXACTLY what he wants. Don't comment after my comment.