A look at the life of Cecil Gaines who served eight presidents as the White House's head butler from 1952 to 1986, and had a unique front-row seat as political and racial history was made. From: IMDb.com
Directed by: Lee Daniels
Starring: John Cusack, Forest Whitaker, Lenny Kravitz and others
Welcome back to the '80's! The age of dumb action flicks, with nonsensical plots and developments and one dimensional characters.
Despite the fact that this is a 2013 movie, it definitely has an '80's type of vibe to it. Not in a very good or positive way, unfortunately though.
Even by normal genre standards; this is one very stupid movie. Characters keep making dumb mistakes and it's the type of movie in which you already start to figure everything out, way before the character's in the movie start to piece things together. The developments in the movie its story are all quite poor and predictable really, which goes at the expense of both the movie its tension and mystery.
It's all no big surprise really, when seeing who all were involved with making this movie. First of all. it's directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith. That name sounded very familiar to me and when I start to look him up, I immediately knew why. He directed some of the absolute worst movies, such as "Arctic Blast", "Tyrannosaurus Azteca", "BMX Bandits", "Megiddo: The Omega Code 2" and the two Leprechaun sequels "Leprechaun 3" and the abysmal "Leprechaun 4: In Space".
And then there's Cuba Gooding Jr., as the movie its main lead. When was the last time he ever starred in a decent movie? Also hard to tell why he said yes to this particular. It's not like it's being a very original movie, or his role is a very demanding one. He also comes across as incredibly bland, which could be also be said for all of the other actors in this movie. Emmanuelle Vaugier arguably is the true main lead in this movie but it's also hard to get behind her character, since she just doesn't comes across as a very likable one. She's constantly smiling, flirting and cracking jokes, all while she just found out some things that normally would really shake a person up, emotionally.
It's also a movie with a very obvious low budget. Seems to me that they spend most of the money on its locations, so please don't expect any spectacular action from this movie. The entire movie is shot in Australia, which also means that it doesn't have a typical slick Hollywood style to it but a less stylized and less effective one instead, with some Aussie accents thrown in the mix.
There once was a time Cuba Gooding Jr. was often starring in some
pretty decent movies. Then there came a time he still starred in big
productions but of questionable quality. Now he is at a B-movie level,
along with Dolph Lundgren, who stars opposite him in this movie.
And honestly, I like dumb action flicks and there are plenty of
enjoyable B-movies out there but this ons just really isn't one of
them. I just couldn't ever enjoy this movie because of the simple
reason that I had absolutely no idea what was going on in it.
Seriously, I just didn't even knew what its main story was supposed to
be all about. It's getting told in such an incredibly messy and
uninteresting way, that I also lost interest in it, pretty quickly. The
story seemed to be an incredibly formulaic one anyway, complete with an
obligatory love-story, so I doubt I missed out on anything.
So is there at least some decent action? Not really. Just a couple of
gun fights and Dolph Lundgren occasionally smacks someone around but
it's nothing too spectacular or anything that shall please the lovers
of the action genre. Just don't watch this movie expecting a lot of
Dolph Lundgren awesomeness. After all, these aren't the '80's anymore,
no matter how desperately this movie tried to be just like an '80's
genre flick at times.
It basically comes down to it that the movie got far too measly made
and put together by director William Kaufman. My goodness, was this
movie bad at times. The editing, the pacing, the storytelling, it all
seems so incredibly off at times, which makes this movie nearly
unwatchable at parts.
Cringingly bad! Just like all of the accents in this movie.
There are tons of comedies made every year. Not too many of them are about the old west It's also not a mix that really ever works out, without becoming a spoof of the genre and use all of its formulaic elements.
The story seems to lack a clear purpose. It's hard to say what the movie is really about and were its heading to. One top of that, things just don't ever flow well in the movie. Everything seems to happen suddenly and without a reason for the rest of the story.
On its comical level its also a rather weak one. For a comedy it surely has some few real laughs. It's one of those comedies that keeps you waiting for a punch-line that just never comes. On top of that the situations in this movie just aren't humorous. Guess they thought that the movie would already be strong and funny enough by making it a buddy-flick, about an old bandit and a mute bandit-wannabe.
Paul Hogan isn't too bad in this movie, although he was clearly far too old for his role at the time. He provides the movie with its best comical moments and some good funny dialog. The Cuba Gooding Jr. character is a bit of a weird one. He's a mute who works at a store and he obviously feel that he is above the simple town-folk and then for some unexplained reasons decides to become a bandit and team-up with, the obviously incapable, bandit Lightning Jack Kane. It also makes you wonder what's the challenging thing for a character to play a mute character. Cuba Gooding Jr. really isn't a bad actors but he too often appears in such weak movies and uninteresting comical roles, that it makes you wonder why he keeps doing it. Guess that he just has fun playing in these type of movies. I'm happy that at least someone had fun. Pat Hingle is also in this movie, in a typical Pat Hingle role. Too bad that they didn't gave his character more screen time, though they potentially really could had done that.
The movie is rather good looking and it doesn't look like some cheap attempt. The costume were especially nice. The musical score on the other hand didn't seemed fitting. It's one of those simplistic scores that sound as if it was completed months before the movie finished shooting and therefor doesn't fit or add anything to the images.
Has its moments but overall a below average and totally uninteresting comedy attempt.
This movie is a very sloppy one. The story is filled with some unlikely events and characters and the directing and especially editing is seriously flawed mostly. Still thanks to its music, this movie still has some entertainment value and also somewhat still works as a 'feel good movie'.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the movie is that the comedy and drama elements of the movie are not balanced out very well. At times the movie can't seem to decide whether it wants to be a comedy or a drama. A result of this is that most of the comedy feels out of place and seriously mistimed. The movie becomes never funny to watch because of this but the warm feel good atmosphere of the movie still somewhat compensates for this.
At times it just totally feels like entire sequences in the movie are missing. Lots of moments in the movie feel rushed and are not satisfying enough. The movie is a real sloppy job. You can't just blame the script for this but also the filmmakers involved. Yes, it's a real mess of a movie at times, that too often takes the easy simple road.
But yet the movie still works good thanks to its music. It makes the movie very pleasant to watch and therefor the movie still works good as a simple feel good movie. But that obviously doesn't mean that the movie itself is also a good one. The movie is too flawed in its story and way of film-making to consider this movie a good or totally recommendable one.
There still is enough to enjoy in this movie but the sloppy way of film-making and storytelling don't make this movie really a recommendable one. Perhaps this movie is a typical case of 'watch at your own risk'...chances are you might end up loving- or totally hating it.
