| Product: |
Last Action Hero (DVD) |
| Date: |
04/10/00 (2 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Three years ago, Disney sank about $45 million into making Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy, then spent another $55 million to promote it.
One top Disney executive later admitted that it probably wasn't worth the effort and expenditure, and he suggested there would be a new era of belt-tightening. Columbia Pictures may be having similar thoughts after sinking what appears to be an even larger fortune into The Last Action Hero, another nearly plotless, in-jokey charade that will annoy just about everyone who comes into contact with it.
Whether you happen to be responsible for sinking $100 million into its creation, or just the $6.75 it now costs for a first-run movie ticket in Seattle, or $3 for the video that will probably be in stores by November, you're going to find yourself wondering why this was supposed to be one of the movie events of the year - and how you got suckered into paying any attention to it.
True, there's plenty of action, a famous face or two every five minutes, a few clever lines and ideas (most of them borrowed from better movies), but what it adds up to is zero. Long before this 122-minute movie is even an hour old, you'll wonder what the point is and where the filmmakers think they're going.
As with most bad pictures, the troubles begin with the script, which is the work of David Arnott, who wrote Andrew Dice Clay's bomb, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, and Shane Black, whose credits include the Bruce Willis misfire, The Last Boy Scout. In an industry in which Joe Eszterhas is paid $1 million for writing Sliver, it's hardly surprising that these people continue to enjoy solid reputations.
The director, John McTiernan, has never quite matched his one great success, Die Hard. He gets perfunctory performances from nearly everyone, and the action scenes rely on being bigger rather than better - more explosions, more bullets, more wrecked police cars.
Blame must
also be shared by the star and executive producer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who pocketed $15 million for playing the title character: a Schwarzenegger-style movie star whose screen adventures inspire a boy (Austin O'Brien) whose fantasies come true when he gets sucked into one of Arnold's movies.
At least the supporting cast includes several deserving actors: Charles Dance, Anthony Quinn, Mercedes Ruehl and Robert Prosky. Ian McKellen plays the hooded death figure from The Seventh Seal (a cute idea that doesn't work) and Joan Plowright is a teacher hung up on Laurence Olivier's old films (a charming idea that comes off as crass).
The movie finally turns into a celebrity-worshiping Hollywood hall of mirrors, a kind of nightmare version of "Entertainment Tonight," with cameos by Leeza Gibbons, Maria Shriver, Chevy Chase, Tina Turner and Jean-Claude Van Damme.
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