Day 298
Tuesday 24 April 2018 4.48pm
‘A Very Big Dumb Movie’ 2018
A John the Dotz Film
As far as films go that operate on the level of King Kong vs military forces, or Godzilla vs military forces, Rampage (2018) set the scene perfectly as it attempts to recreate a Ray Harryhausen-style film. He used to pit little human beings against big – oversized – creatures, and although they were awful they weren’t any worse than Rampage, but they were hardly any better. The scripts were hackneyed. The characters weren’t people you actually recognised as people you knew, let alone believe could be real. No one’s behaviour was like you’d expect because everything was wooden or plastic.
I’d say the same thing about Mysterious Island and Jason and the Argonauts as I do about Rampage: “If you’ve got reasonable effects, why not let’s work out how to add a really good story AND good DIALOGUE”. If you can do both you’ve got a film that might entice viewers to leave the comfort of their television sets and go in greater numbers to a cinema or theatre. If you can’t, then you’ve got this.
It’s not even a so-bad-that-it’s-good film. Earthquake was one that wasn’t, but The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno were. Rollercoaster not so good. Black Sunday, pretty damn good – THE BEST OF THIS PERIOD. The Charlton Heston stadium-sniper-film ranked with Earthquake.
