Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
8/9/09
Jerry Bruckheimer has produced
untold hundreds (perhaps even thousands) of hours of movies and TV in a
three-decade career, the majority of which stand for a certain kind of
relentless action-adventure. It would be difficult for anyone not
to develop certain Mad Libs tendencies after all that output, but his new
family action flick G-Force plays like a perverse game of trying
to take an utterly un-Bruckheimer story and squeeze it into that mold.
Not that I minded, because whenever the events of the moment haven't seemed
to have wandered in from The Rock, the movie is an unqualified failure.
But listening to Trevor Rabin's score blare over the adventures of a bunch
of talking guinea pigs with identical conviction to Bruce Willis attacking
that asteroid, it's pretty clear that G-Force is a resume-padding
afterthought for everyone involved.
Using special equipment,
government scientist Ben (Zach Galifianakis) has taught a collection of
animals to talk, to stand on two legs, and to go on top-secret spy missions.
His team is led by three guinea pigs: straight-arrow Darwin (voice
of Sam Rockwell), spicy Latina Juarez (Penelope Cruz), and hip-hop cliché
Blaster (Tracy Morgan) are joined by a Mole named Speckles (Nicolas Cage)
and housefly Mooch (Dee Bradley Baker is credited, although I didn't hear
any lines). Trying to prove their mettle before a big inspection
by boss Kip Killian (Will Arnett), they launch an unapproved assault on
the mansion of weapons dealer-turned-home appliance magnate Leonard Saber
(Bill Nighy). Darwin recovers a file suggesting he's got “global
extermination” planned in less than 48 hours, but it doesn't show up on
his flash drive when Killian comes calling. As such, the bigwig decides
to shut the whole operation down and the escaping rodents end up in a pet
shop where they meet crazy hamster Bucky (Steve Buscemi) and unathletic
guinea pig Hurley (Jon Favreau). A series of events lead to each
animal leaving the shop separately, and Darwin will need Hurley's help
to get the G-Force back together and try to save the world from some seriously
vicious household appliances.
I mentioned indifference:
six different writers worked on the G-Force screenplay and the four
guinea pigs emerge with the following character traits: Darwin's
the lead, Blaster is black, Hurley is fat, and Juarez is both Hispanic
AND a girl. These depths of imagination extend to the human characters:
Ben is loyal (and fat), Kip is a jerk, Saber is some business guy, and
Marcie (Kelli Garner) is the girl standing next to Ben. Within these
confines, each character is asked to say something funny each time they
open their mouths, but sadly can only muster song lyrics, quotes from other
movies, and 2nd grade schoolyard lines like “I hate it when my fly is down”
(Galifianakis doesn't even put the accent on the right word to make it
a pun, and that immortal wisecrack is still a centerpiece of the ad campaign).
Justin Mentell actually applies himself and is VERY funny in a couple scenes
as a worker at the pet shop, and Buscemi and Favreau do funny voice work,
but otherwise the movie is horribly short on laughs given that it sacrifices
character to one-liners at every turn. Blaster's role is most horrible
in this regard: virtually every one of Morgan's lines could be put
in a hat and drawn out at random without altering the scenes in any way.
And just how did a bunch of guinea pigs see all these movies and hear all
these songs anyway? A running bit of business with Darwin and Blaster
trying to figure out who Juarez is “interested in” is eye-rollingly awful.
And don't get me started on Hurley's flatulence, climaxing in one of the
nastiest sight gags I can recall in a kid's movie (rude humor, indeed!).
Luckily, Bruckheimer's around
to send those six writers notes demanding that they blow something up.
The action sequences are actually pretty good, particularly a lengthy chase
between the guinea pigs in souped-up hamster balls and the FBI. And
while it feels more than a little borrowed from the Transformers
movies of Bruckheimer's former collaborator Michael Bay, the vicious appliances
are pretty cool, particularly when they join together to form a fairly
unique giant robot at the end. There is a plot twist in the third
act, although once the movie establishes that there's something we don't
know about Saber's plan, anybody who's seen a movie within the last decade
or so will probably puzzle it out. But that twist provides the movie
its' only real quality character stuff. I'd also be remiss not to
mention that Cage is really good as the mole. I remember thinking
three years back that his work in The Ant Bully was among the best
I'd ever heard from a star in a voice role, and here again he shows that
he should do more of this stuff.
As I mentioned in the opening
paragraph, Trevor Rabin is one of my favorite composers, but his work here
is almost hilariously derivative of his stuff from better movies, even
when there's no reason for it. And his injection of “wacky Hispanic
music” when Juarez is on screen is utterly painful. Of course, the
movie's use of music in general is pretty bad, with random pop tunes suddenly
slamming onto the soundtrack at top volume. One (Black Eyed Peas'
“Boom Boom Pow”) is even used twice. In general the movie's production
values veer wildly back and forth between cheesy and big-budget.
Since the guinea pigs seem much more like hairy people than animals, watching
them walk around and talk doesn't even really pack much of an impact; not,
at least, like watching a coffee machine attack somebody.
G-Force is diverting
enough that it's not painful, but it's amazingly lazy and derivative for
a movie pitting talking animals against killer appliances. In the
Jerry Bruckheimer cannon, I'd slot it somewhere between Coyote Ugly
and King Arthur. And the newspaper's pretty nasty in that
part of the hamster cage... |
