Sunday, February 19, 2012

This Means War

I guess I'm still feeling the spy genre again this week. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to see I was curious about Ghost Rider but I don't know, Nicholas Cage just has left me flat so often lately I just couldn't bring myself to go. I was also contemplating seeing Chronicle but I just wasn't sure I wanted to see it on the big screen. Then we have door number 3. I really love Tom Hardy in pretty much everything I've seen of him and Chris Pine is really becoming a great leading man for these kind of action flicks, and of course you can't go wrong with Reese Witherspoon unless she's in some kind of schmaltzy boring rom-com. Which this isn't, mostly. There are many times though where I feel like Reese believes she's in Sweet Home Alabama and the guys think they are in Mister and Mrs. Smith or True Lies or something. Which quite frankly makes it hard to really love this film.
Two apparently seasoned CIA agents and friends, Tuck (Tom Hardy) and FDR (Chris Pine), seem to have a good thing going at the agency where they catch the bad guys and things go boom. It seems at times to desperately want to be Lethal Weapon. Anyway, the two of them seem the best of friends until they discover that they are both dating the same girl, Lauren (Reese Witherspoon) and from then on it's a game of brinkmanship and one-upping each other until they are smacking each other with 2X4's and such.
The real problem with this movie isn't the basic plot it seems like there is a really fun quirky movie in here trying to get out but then, and I don't mean to beat a dead horse here, McG comes into the picture and waters it all down to complete uselessness. Also Chelsea Handler is completely annoying and terrible and you want her to go away about two seconds after you hear her grating voice. Why the hell is she in this movie? There is no edge to this movie there are a few funny lines and the actors are good and they seem like they are having fun which is a plus for a movie like this, but the movie just feels very scripted and boring. It also can't seem to make up it's mind if this is an action movie or a rom-com. It certainly isn't both. It fails pretty bad in the romantic department and the bad guy is completely useless and one dimensional, so it fails there too. It would be curious to see a movie like this in a better directors hands, to see if the outcome would have been any different.
Anyway, if you are looking for a silly non-threatening rom-com with some carefully placed action sequences then you may get something out of this movie, otherwise I would avoid it. There are better movies on the horizon and you aren't going to lose sleep over this one.

Grade: 2 Buckets

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