Michael's Movie Grade: B-
A highly entertaining if very familiar action comedy.
The humor here is hardly what you would call sophisticated or witty. Because of this I don't imagine this film winning many favors with critics. Yet humor neither needs to be sophisticated or witty to be funny. Sometimes something is just funny because it makes you laugh and this movie certainly made me laugh. Much of this is due to the incredible chemistry and comic delivery from the movie's main three stars (Samuel L. Jackson, Selma Hayek, Ryan Reynolds). The trio make an perfect comedy team and even make some jokes that on paper would be unfunny, actually funny. To be honest the movie doesn't really kick into gear until these three first share the screen but at that moments the laughs often come steadily. I saw this in a theatre with an audience and that is by far the the best way to see it. The audience was clearly really enjoying themselves and it is hard not to get caught up in the pure enjoyment.
That said while this film successeds quite well as a comedy as an action movie it leads a little to be desired. The stakes and the storyline are completely silly, familiar and cliché , which works perfectly for the comedy but makes it so the action scenes are hard to get involved in and lack suspense needed to make them as exciting as could be. This movie also suffers from a bland and boring villain (in fact most of the characters who aren't our main three characters or played by Morgan Freeman aren't very interesting), which doesn't help the movie in this department. Still the action scenes do have some of that good old fashioned R rated fun many will want from them and they are quite enjoyable for what they are. Plus with a movie that really truly makes you laugh you may not care about this.
All in all this is a truly funny comedy and an enjoyable action movie.
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