Peter Parkour... "Tracers"

Tracers (2015)

Rated PG-13

Starring Taylor Lautner, Marie Avgeropoulos, Adam Rayner, Rafi Gavron, Luciano Acuna Jr., Josh Yadon,

Directed by Daniel Benmayor

The Story:

Cam (Lautner) is a New York bike messenger who owes his shirt to the Chinese Mafia. When he runs into Nikki (Avgeroupoulos), he winds up joining her and her friends as they parkour around the city. Ah, but it turns out they use their parkour skills to supplement their incomes by doing nefarious deeds. Perhaps this will be Cam's ticket out of a jam.

Well it appears the attempt by Hollywood to turn Taylor Lautner into the next big thing leading man have dried up and blown away.

That's not necessarily a bad thing.

This movie is a definite step up over the laughable film, Abduction.

It is completely watchable, and the stunt work and storyline keeps the movie heading forward.

That said, if you missed it, there's no real reason to go hunting this one down to catch up on your Taylor Lautner fix.

You can always go watch Twilight.

Nah, I take that back, this was still a better love story than Twilight.

:)

Final Grade: C+

How The West Wasn't Won..."The Ridiculous 6"

The Ridiculous 6 (2015)

Not Rated

Starring Adam Sandler, Terry Crews, Nick Nolte, Rob Schneider, Jorge Garcia, Taylor Lautner, Luke Wilson, Will Forte, Steve Zahn, Harvey Keitel, Danny Trejo, David Spade, Jon Lovitz, Vanilla Ice,
Directed by Frank Coraci

The Story:

Tommy (Sandler) was raised by Indians after his mom died. When his father (Nolte) finally finds him after all these years, he is quickly taken away by Cicero (Trejo) to find the money that he thinks is his. Tommy goes after his dad and discovers that he has 5 brothers from other mothers and they ride into the West to get $50,000 in order to save their dad's life!

Wow, this one goes off the rails quickly and never fully recovers.

I'm usually the first in line to proclaim that an Adam Sandler isn't that bad.

However, for whatever reason, this movie starts off very slow, and very unfunny. There are amusing bits, but when you sign on for a movie like this, with this much talent on display, there needs to be laughs, not smiles when a joke or gag hits the screen.

Perhaps it is the legacy of Blazing Saddles that will forever make any western comedy feel something less than great, but a lot of this has to fall onto Sandler's shoulders as co-writer of this piece.

He's assembled a great cast, many of whom I don't mention in the credits above simply because of how many people are in this film for a bit part or larger.

The other is the running (or dragging) time of this film.

2 hours?!

No.

Comedies should clock in at 90, maybe 100 minutes. At nearly 120 minutes, most of them laugh free, that's interminable for a comedy.

Add to that the horribly annoying Taylor Lautner's Forrest Gump inspired idiot brother, I wanted to punch something just about any time he's on screen.

Which was way more often than he should have been. Which could have cut back the running time of the film considerably.

:)

That said, there are a few pieces that actually work in this film.

Most notable, John Turturro's arrival as Abner Doubleday who decides to create a little game, and proceeds to make up the rules as he goes along.

That scene is funny, and actually feels like how the rules of baseball were likely made up!

Plus, Vanilla Ice as a strangely inspired version of Mark Twain is ridiculous, but in a good way.

I want to give these guys a break, with the whole 4 picture exclusive to Netflix deal, but with a cast and crew that should know better, I think I'm going to have to downgrade this to a Turkey of the Year candidate.

Final Grade: D+

Get Ready to Twi Hard! "Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2"

The thrilling conclusion to the eleventeen part movie trilogy...


The Story:

Bella (Kristen Stewart) is now a vampire, married to her man Edward (Robert Pattinson).  Their baby is growing up...fast!  And this threat is going to bring a war to end all wars between every vampire ever seen on the screen, and a whole bunch of newbies created just for this film.  Oh, and there's werewolves too (Taylor Lautner)!

Yes, I've seen them all.

No, I'm not a delusional teenage girl.

Nor did my delusional teenage girls even remotely make me get this series.

What had happened was....

The first Twilight movie came out, what seems like a lifetime ago...  It was nifty enough, not a total waste of time...

So I've watched the whole thing, and now that it's over...

It is over, right?

I shrug my shoulders and think "it could have been worse".

So it's not bad... it's not a train wreck.  The three leads have the charisma of a wet paper bag, so I've gone with the fact that they are actually surrounded by interesting side characters.  The Cullen family and Bella's dad are great throughout the film series.

The introduction of a whole lot of vampires in this film was actually interesting, and I wouldn't mind seeing more of them.  Retroactive history, I would have preferred to watch several movies starring those characters instead. :) 

Otherwise, this one brought the series to a close relatively nicely.

It was marred by some creepy CGI-ing a face onto a baby and kid though.  Ick...

And I have to admit, the 'final battle' got me.  That's how little I pay attention to the film, I fell for that trick!

I'll give the saga as a whole, a C+ for execution.

This installment, a solid C, a big improvement over Part 1 which was a 2 hour placeholder.

Would I Own/Rewatch:  No, I received enough grief for subjecting everyone to it once already. : )
throughout the film.  Disturbing to say the least.