* (only because I can’t give minus ratings)
Shamefully bad Laughable. Completely laughable. But the tragedy is that it is totally unintended by director Sidney Furie (how did he find work again? and was this really the same man that brought us The Ipcress File?). This was made as a serious piece of filmmaking – not a tongue or a cheek in sight. It is ghastly. Truly I cannot think of a positive thing to say about it. Previously Reeve and Hackman have brought gravitas to this comic book series, but even for them this is a paint-by-numbers charade. What is also pitiful and laughable is how the special effects managed to be considerably worse than the original Superman Movie made ten years earlier. A 7 year old with a set of crayons could have done better. A real embarrassment to all concerned.
* (only because I can’t give minus ratings)
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Some typical Arnie 80s fare on offer here as our biceped hero kills his way to victory whilst offering a plethora of cheesy puns along the way. You know, the usual corny throwaway line of “He had to split” after he sliced some bad guy down the middle with a chainsaw, or after strangling another deserving villain with some barbed wire, “What a pain in the neck.” Terrible, and yet somehow brilliant. You know you’d be very disappointed if they weren’t there. Based loosely on a Stephen King short story (how prolific is he?) set in a dystopian world, Arnie is supposed to pay for his “crimes” against society by being the hunted target in a rigged TV show. You can pretty much write the rest for yourself… he doesn’t go softly into the night, but he fights back and kills the hunters sent to kill him… whilst dropping terrible yet brilliant puns in all over the place. Oh and there is a ridiculous tacked on romance angle too. I know, how silly and utterly unnecessary. This is by no means the best Arnie film, but there are worse. *** Ahh Steve Martin. Do you remember the days when you were funny? You had Roxanne; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Parenthood all within a couple of years of one another. All hilarious, all immensely rewatchable, all 80s classics. Compare that run of hits to the lamentable brace of Pink Panther and Cheaper by the Dozen (who on earth sanctioned a sequel for either one of those never deserves to work again) and you can see my point. A modern day version of Rostand’s famous Cyrano de Bergerac, Roxanne will always be infamous for the hilarious ‘20 insults funnier than “Big Nose”’ sequence, delivered with panache by a top of his game comedian.
**** |
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