RICHARD’S WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FROM CP24! FRIDAY MARCH 20, 2015.
Richard’s CP 24 reviews for “The Divergent Series: Insurgent” and “The Gunman.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Posts Tagged ‘Taylor Lautner’
RICHARD’S “CANADA AM” REVIEWS FOR MARCH 20 WITH BEVERLY THOMSON.
Richard’s “Canada AM” reviews for “The Divergent Series: Insurgent,” “The Gunman” and “Tracers.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
TRACERS: 1 ½ STARS. “don’t look at the movie, look at where the movie isn’t.”
In his new film former werewolf Taylor Lautner gets a premium rush out of making exactly the kind of movie you’d think Taylor Lautner would make.
In “Tracers” he plays Cam, the annoying kind of bike courier who pops wheelies on the sidewalk and stunt drives through traffic. In other words he’s the kind of bike courier who only exists in the movies.
On one of his wild rides through NYC he crashes into Nikki (Marie Avgeropoulos) a cute parkour enthusiast and thief. He hangs out with her and her crew—a group of like-minded hustlers who spin and twirl and jump where normal thieves might creep and tip-toe—learning the tricks of the trade and falling under the spell of Miller (Adam Rayner), a Fagin-like character who sets up their robberies and says things like, “That’s the past, all we have is the present.”
Cam owes beaucoup bucks to a loan shark (Johnny M. Wu) and in and attempt to make some fast cash, and impress Nikki, he joins the gang and commits several crimes. When Miller announces he wants to do one last, big score, the stakes are raised.
“Tracers” is the kind of teen movie that thinks anyone under the age of twenty will be satisfied with the barest minimum of entertainment. A pastiche of loud music, good looking young people, brooding glares, and, of course, star-crossed-parkour-loving lovers, it’s a music video writ large with the emotional depth of 1980s metal power ballad.
Front and canter is Lautner who undisputed mastery of the running and jumping required to ace the role suggests that he may have a bright future as a gymnast should this acting thing not work out for him.
Rayner brings some brooding intensity to the role of Miller, but everyone is saddled with either clichéd or silly dialogue. When handing out parkour advice to her young student Nikki channels Yoda and tells him, “If you want to vault the car, don’t look at the car, look at where the car isn’t.” With that in mind if you want to get something more than flash and trash out of “Tracers” don’t look at the movie, look at where the movie isn’t.
THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN: 3 STARS
“The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn” packs a lot into its first half hour. There’s Taylor Lautner’s abs (twenty seconds in), teen brooding, a vampiric confession, an overprotective werewolf and the most anticipated teen wedding of the decade. Well, she’s eighteen, he’s over one hundred years old but looks like a youngin’. It’s the next-to-last in the popular series and takes Twihards to the bedroom and beyond.
In case you don’t know this is the episode in which the passionate, but chaste relationship between vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) become official and sexual. Everyone is pleased with the pairing except werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner), the lobo who is loco for Bella. He doesn’t approve, but when Bella gets pregnant with her dead lover’s baby and a tribe of werewolves vows to kill her, he chooses to follow his heart, not his heritage.
Like the most successful of recent teen movie franchises “Twilight” treats its characters with respect. Their trip from page to stage has been an easy journey, with most of traits that endeared author Stephanie Meyers’s creations to readers intact. The movies value the integrity of the characters and I think that is what has kept audiences coming back for more.
It’s not because they’re great movies. They’ve gotten better, and this Bill Condon directed episode is one of the best of the bunch–although he pads out the almost two-hour running time with so many music montages I lost count after the deflowering montage–but misses greatness because of its slavish loyalty to the book.
The story readers expect is there–family values intact, even if they are more Addams Family than Family Ties–with traditional morays celebrated, but the presentation of Bella’s pregnancy misses an opportunity to explore the darker side of this vampire story. What could have been a cool Cronenberg-style play on body horror instead becomes melodrama with a pro-life twist.
But “Twilight” has as much to do with horror as Pauley Shore does to comedy so I shouldn’t expect real scares, but stranger than any supernatural element in the story is its attitude toward the physical relationship between Bella and Edward. Despite containing a tasteful sex scene the movie seems afraid of sex.
What message does it send to the young audience that Bella can declare how happy she is, while covered in bruises after a night of wild vampire get-it-on? And don’t even contemplate the horrors of pregnancy, it seems to say.
If it was a horror film the odd messages could be taken for what they are–plot devices–but in this context they read more like unnecessary cautionary tales about the dangers of sex between consenting adults.
“Breaking Dawn” isn’t likely to recruit many new Twilight fans, but despite some odd sexual politics should please fans of the series.
ABDUCTION: 1 STAR
In “Abduction,” “Twilight” werewolf Taylor Lautner is Nathan, a typical teen who discovers his life isn’t what he thought it was when he finds a photo of himself on a missing person’s website. His investigation into the origin of the picture makes him a pawn in an international game of intrigue involving the CIA, an encrypted text message and the pretty girl from next door.
There is a certain percentage of the population who would pay to Lautner stand shirtless in a field, abs rippling in the wind. That would be a better movie than “Abduction.” He’s got the teen angst eye roll down to a science but other than that hands in the most wooden performance since Geppetto carved Pinocchio out of a block of oak. Beware of woodpeckers.
He’s in every scene and despite a tense fight scene here or a loud gun battle there; “Abduction” is sunk by bad acting and even worse dialogue. Even old pros like Alfred Molina and Sigourney Weaver can’t get past lines like “there’s a bomb in the oven,” one of the most hilairously bad lines this year.
“Abduction” will leave you wondering how, exactly, that bomb got into the oven and how exactly, this bomb made it into theatres.
