JT-Kirk

This story of a 35-year-old Brendan Fraser raised in a fallout shelter and then has to navigate the world for the first time is cute, but doesn't quite coalesce and lacks the comedic or story punch it should.

Fraser's a perfect fish out of water, nice boy from raised from the pretense of '60s suburban life. Christopher Walken and Sissy Spacek play his parents and they're fantastic, we spend a lot of the first half of the movie with them and it works well. Alicia Silverstone plays the love interest trying not to fall for Fraser as she helps him gather what he's looking for on the surface world, she's giving the same performance she always does. Dave Foley plays the gay roommate and this was not a bad character, he's played this character on KITH a million times but they wrote the character around some pitfalls so he doesn't feel fully fleshed out, but he's not a total cliche.

The movie's got charm, but not enough laughs, and misses some logic to the way the story moves throughout. It's "cute" but feels like it could have been raucously funny or a smarter, better story at nearly every moment.

After the halfway mark, the film loses steam until we get to a very forced ending, literally coughed up in the moment to create the dramatic finale, and it doesn't quite work for it.

That said, I would absolutely watch a sequel starring Walken, Spacek, and Fraser in those same roles made today.

Roddy Piper and Sonny Chiba as buddy cops tracking down a murderous fight club in Mexico gets the good things right, but can't just keep that going all the way. The pacing after the first 15 minutes drops considerably, act 2 is lead at times when the main characters separate and the tone shifts over and over. Meg Foster hams it up considerably to great effect, while Lara Steinick does her best with a tourist with ulterior motives. Tiny Lister doesn't get quite enough to do, there's too many moving parts in general, but there are enough highs to keep you going until you get to a fun third act.

Some great fights and stunts, some interesting story beats too, and the leads are charismatic with a good rapport.

Reminiscence: from the co-creator of Westworld (the tv series) comes this rock-stupid future-noir that reeks of film school bunk and empty COVID-safe filming sets.

This film wishes it was "smart Inception" but ends up "even simpler, dumber Inception" instead, with heavy-handed allegory and metaphor, clumsily creating a post-war Philip Marlowe-esque world in the near future of global warming (the least-believable thing? The lack of mold everywhere).

Hugh Jackman plays "protagonist with dubious American accent" who is paid to peer into people's memories and gets wrapped up in the most boilerplate noir plotline possible, with drinking and a femme fatale and hard-boiled lines and fist fights. The spoilers don't even matter once you know that and have even a cursory understanding of cinematic tropes in noir and later-day sci-fi.

I will say exactly this: it was adequate, inoffensive late-August entertainment that's at least more tolerable than most streaming platforms' originals, less stupid and insulting than The Tomorrow War, but in no way would I have ever gone to see it in a theater or paid for it beyond its inclusion with HBO Max. Straight up a 6.