Top Gun Double Feature

2017 Blind Spot Series: The Doors

Planes

Directed by Klay Hall.

2013. Rated PG, 91 minutes.

Cast:

Dane Cook

Stacy Keach

Brad Garrett

Teri Hatcher

Julia Louis-Dryfus

Priyanka Chopra

John Cleese

Cedric the Entertainer

Carlos Alazraqui

Sinbad

Anthony Edwards

Roger Craig Smith

Val Kilmer

Brent Musberger

Dusty Crophopper (Cook) is just a crop duster. That doesn't stop his dreams of being racing plane. To fulfill his lifelong wish, he decides to try to qualify for the upcoming world famous Wings Across the World race. Against all odds, and due to some funny business by another racer, Dusty snags the last available spot. Even though he's severely outclassed by his competitors, and they let him know it, he is out not just to participate, but to win. There is one other teeny, tiny problem. One leg of the race involves flying over mountains and he is afraid of heights. Yup, he's a plane afraid of heights.

If you've heard anything about Planes, it's probably that it was made to capitalize on the popularity of the Cars franchise and is pretty much a knock-off. That much is true. Where most will probably disagree with me is that, in this case, the knock-off is better than the original. Full disclosure: I hate Cars. To me, it is an overly long, poorly paced, snooze fest. Planes is on par with Cars 2, which I also like better than Cars. I place this movie as a small step below Turbo, yet another movie following the same basic template. In that one, we sub in a snail.

Planes knows something that Cars didn't and uses that knowledge to its advantage. It fully understands that the racing is the draw. Where Cars back-logged all of the fun stuff to sit behind a way-too-lengthy setup, Planes gets us to the action rather quickly. All of the other elements you'd expect to be there are incorporated into the racing. We still get the wise old sage (Keach), a love interest (Chopra), an identity crisis for our hero, and a villain. The pace is so snappy, we notice that they are present, but don't have time to dwell on them, nitpick them, or worse, become bored by them. Instead, the time flies by, bad pun intended, and we have a fun time.

The drawback to all that speed is that our characters are stuck in neutral. They all stick to the expected arcs with almost no deviation from the norm. This robs most of them of their pizazz. This is where Turbo excels. In that movie, we get big personalities that follow similar tropes, but with much more charisma. Here, I felt like I could write the dialogue. Actually, I could probably replace it all with a catch-phrase or two for each character.

As things come to a close, we've seen a movie that's fun, but ultimately forgettable. It zips through our lives covering the same basic lessons so many other cartoons have trampled to death. Without doing anything especially good or bad, it leaves nary a trace after it's gone. The silver lining is that while it's on, it's an enjoyable little plane ride.

MY SCORE: 6/10

Ranking the Batman Movies: #15

15. Batman Forever

(1995)

Directed by Joel Schumacher

Batman…Val Kilmer

Robin…Chris O’Donnell

Alfred…Michael Gough

James Gordon…Pat Hingle

The Riddler…Jim Carrey

Two-Face…Tommy Lee Jones

Dr. Chase Meridian…Nicole Kidman

Well, whaddya know? We populate the bottom of the list with both Joel Schumacher movies. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the franchise probably knew this would be the case. This was the first of the JS flicks. He was hired to lighten up the series after the macabre adventure that was Tim Burton’s Batman Returns. The results are fairly bad. The tone is uneven: dark and brooding at some points, over the top campy at others. It makes little to no sense whatsoever. As The Riddler, Jim Carrey delivers a completely unhinged performance. It’s like watching Frank Gorshin on speed. That part isn’t so bad because we kind of expect that from him. What’s bizarre is watching Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face behave the same way. It didn’t seem to fit either him or the character. Robin is introduced, for I don’t know what reason. The pleasant surprise is that Val Kilmer wasn’t too bad as Batman.

Macgruber

Directed by Jorma Taccone.
2010. Rated R, 90 minutes.
Cast:
Will Forte
Kristen Wiig
Val Kilmer
Ryan Phillippe
Powers Boothe
Andy Mackenzie
Maya Rudolph
Jasper Cole

Macgruber (Forte) is an ex-Navy SEAL with more awards than you can count. He’s already saved the world numerous times. For the last ten years, he’s been declared dead but has been living peacefully in another country. His old buddy Col. Faith (Boothe) comes calling for him to rescue us once more.

Since this is supposed to be a spoof of the thousands of movies with similar plots, Macgruber isn’t your typical strapping buck oozing testosterone with every step. Nor does he possess off the charts intelligence he was to outwit his foes. He’s regular enough in appearance, which is fine. However, he’s a total moron in every sense of the word that we’re supposed to believe was once a hero.

The character Macgruber is where the biggest problem with the movie Macgruber lies. The movie insists there was some greatness there to be lost. The neverending acts of buffoonery which follow, sink that notion. It doesn’t help that he still looks very young and hardly world-weary, not to mention he’s an ex-SEAL that doesn’t know how to use a gun. We never believe he was ever capable of the heroism assigned to him. Essentially, this means we’re not deconstructing a hero, we’re watching an idiot try really hard to make us laugh by doing idiotic things. The latter is never as fun as the former. Think back to the far less hyped but better Shoot ‘em Up, starring Clive Owen. The man who saves the day didn’t have to be a dunce for us to get that the whole thing is a ruse, one that actually makes us laugh.

Having an imbecile for a hero can work if the jokes are smart. The entire Naked Gun franchise is built on the dim bulb we’ve come to know and love as Frank Drebin, played by the recently late and always great Leslie Nielsen. However, the jokes themselves are exceedingly clever, for the most part. The ones that aren’t are far more forgivable and still make us laugh because of the ones that surround them. The best Macgruber can muster is our title character sticking celery up his butt, humping a tombstone and offering oral sex to men to get his way. That last one was done much funnier by a couple puppets in Team America, another better spoof.

There are a few occasions where Macgruber makes us laugh. It takes so many cracks at it, it will inevitably hit the target at least a few times. I’m reminded of the old saying about how often broken clocks are right.

MY SCORE: 4/10