I’m pretty sure I say this every other month, but life can come at you pretty fast, and I’ve let a few things slip through the cracks in trying to keep up with it all. The casualties this time around were two very successful summer blockbusters which I probably would have gotten a few extra views if I was timely with these reviews, but there’s no time like the present to try and catch up! Were these classic films carelessly shunted to the end of my to-do list, or does it make some amount of sense that I couldn’t be bothered to finish these reviews when they were relevant? Let’s find out!!
.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
Bad Boys: Ride or Die is owned by Sony Pictures Releasing
Directed by Adil & Bilall
The first two Bad Boys movies are obnoxious and crass in a way that left me very ambivalent about going into the third one, but the new blood behind the camera ended up being the shot in the arm the franchise needed to stay relevant. This one, however, is content to rest on its laurels and use the excuse of a sequel to work out some fancy camera techniques. It’s not a bad movie by any stretch, and it still runs circles around the first two, but it lacks a meaningful reason to exist. The third one actually had something to say about its aging heroes, which gave it a sense of purpose beyond the action spectacle and funny banter. They try to keep that thread going here, but there’s nothing of substance to it, as Laurence’s brush with death early in the movie is a complete goof and doesn’t hit the same way that it did with Smith in the first one. They’re also not as interesting to watch as Smith and Laurence seem to be going through the motions at times, but I would chalk that up to the lackluster script. It’s supposed to be a redemptive story, but the plot is far too convoluted for it to have the raw emotional catharsis that you’d want, and without a clear direction to point our two leads, they feel a little lost in the weeds. Still, the action is fantastic with Adil & Bilall proving once again why Warner Bros were fools to dump their Batgirl movie, and while the action is certainly sillier than in the last one, there’s more than enough of it at a fast enough clip that you hardly even notice as you’re sitting through it. I got the sense that the third movie was written to be an end to the series, even if the door was open to possible sequels. I don’t get that sense watching this one, as the sequel door is left wide open with neon signs around it and a twenty dollar bill dangling on a fishing line. If they want to keep this franchise going for as long as Smith and Laurence are interested in doing so, then the best of luck to them, but running the sequel mill has its drawbacks, and despite the movie’s subtitle, there’s no significant shakeup to the status quo to mark this one out as a significant entry. It’s been several weeks since I saw it and very little has stuck with me the same way that Bad Boys for Life has, so by that measure it’s a disappointing sequel. Not a significant disappointment, especially since it’s still the second best in the series by my estimation, but you’re only gonna get so far when not trying to do too much.
.
Twisters
Twisters is owned by Universal Pictures
Directed by Lee Isaac Chung
When I was a very young kid, there were two movies that absolutely terrified me; the first was Jurassic Park, and the second was Twister. Thankfully I’ve gotten over my fear of the movie, though tornadoes do still scare the hell out of me, and it’s got a certain charm to it that sets it apart from other disaster movies of its era. It was certainly a big hit for everyone involved, which makes the fact that we didn’t get a sequel in the Nineties far more surprising than Hollywood digging it up in 2024, but even so I think this movie makes an admirable case for itself. It’s definitely more of a reboot than a sequel, which feels like the right move, as Twister isn’t a household name because of its characters, but because of its premise and special effects. Like the original, it captures a sense of homeyness that’s lacking in say the Roland Emmerich type of disaster films, and they managed to come up with a decent storyline which was a pleasant surprise. The characters here are fun, with Glen Powell generating enough charisma to light the eastern seaboard, and there are enough interesting plot threads for it to keep from being dull in between the big weather scenes. It’s, perhaps, a little on the nose with the corporate finger wagging, but I didn’t expect the movie to have even that much social commentary when there are buildings to destroy, so it gets an extra point for that. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is very much what I expected it to be as this is another movie that suffers from Big Sequel Syndrome where the disasters have to be bigger and flashier, but end up lacking any impact. Tornadoes are one of my biggest fears, so it wouldn’t have taken a lot to get my hair to stand on end, and yet the big disastrous twister scenes in this were silly at best and eye-rolling at worst. Perhaps that’s the point, as you don’t want to scare off your audience for a big revival of a Nineties classic; us Millennials are getting up in years and don’t need the shock to our aging hearts. Still, it’s far too staged to have any impact, and the contrivances stack up faster than the body count. I don’t like to nitpick story beats as they tend to be a cover for a deeper discomfort that’s harder to put into words, but the fact that the movie tells us this is going to be the most intense week of tornadoes in recorded history, and yet the nearby towns are still holding rodeos and farmers markets, well that makes it hard to see this as anything more than a spectacle for enjoying rather than a disaster worth fearing. Perhaps I’m overstating the amount of terror a movie like this should have just because the original scared me pretty badly as a kid, but where something like Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was a solid continuation of a classic film, this is well put together but working off of far less interesting material, so the end result is perhaps what could be expected by making another Twister movie. I suppose those with enjoyed the original will get a nice feeling of nostalgia from this and may even appreciate how it gamely modernized the formula, but much like Bad Boys For Life, it can’t be anything more than what it had set out to be.
The Reviewers Unite 