Fast X (AKA Fast Ten Your Seatbelts)

 

I don't know what to say about these movies that has not already been said by me and a thousand others. "The Fast and Furious" series has gotten bigger and more preposterous with each entry, and the connection to reality disappeared around the fifth one in the series. They are extremely well made, over the top action films, that you can enjoy the heck out of, as long as you are willing to give up any sense of reality. The physics are silly, the characters are cartoons, the stunts are Rube Goldberg sequences that will make you want to go back to your childhood and play "Mousetrap". Every movie has the same tropes in it somewhere, there is a racing scene, shots of girls wiggling their hind ends to hip hop songs at the race scene, and then there are the character beats. Vin Diesel's Dom gets serious and says he has to go it alone, the team mocks that idea, Letty defies the notion, and they all end up working together. There will be new characters introduced, usually with some family connections. A Secondary character will return to be sacrificed at some point in the story, and a dead character will be resurrected. There is also usually a double cross somewhere ion the story, and/or enemies come together for a common purpose. 

"Fast X" or "Fast Ten Your Seatbelts" as my friend Mark Hofmeyer would call it) has all of those moments. Like a Roger Moore 007 film, it checks off the essentials, tosses them together and then gets by on it's stars. Michelle Rodriguez continues to glower at everyone who might be an opponent, and if there is a woman to be taken down, she will get the sequence that requires that ass whopping. Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris will do their Abbot and Costello routine, fall out for 30 seconds and then bond again. They are the comic relief most of the time, although there are other characters that do get to put some comedic spin on what they are doing. The characters of Han and Ramsey are along for the ride on this one, but they have almost nothing to do for most of the story. Charlize Theron likewise, is in the story, but the segment with her and Letty is mostly shoehorned in to give them something to do while the rest of the action is taking place. 

The best thing that the makers of this franchise have done, is introduce new characters on a regular basis. Those characters can come back and be part of the action in the next films. Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham and Jon Cena all started out as antagonists to Dom's team, and end up working with them in later films. Helen Mirren is not given a lot to do, but when she shows up, she classes up the film a bit. I try to avoid spoilers in my essays so be careful with this next bit, although anyone who has followed the series knows that it is true. Characters die in the films, but they all seem to come back somehow. We get a couple of those moments and the film itself is a bit of a tipoff because of how it ends.

Fresh faces keep things lively in the eleven films so far (which includes the Hobbs and Shaw spinoff). Jon Cena was the anti-Dom in the last film, and now he is back as a semi-autonomous surrogate father for several scenes. He seems to be having a great time and I enjoyed his sequences more than most of the others. However, it is clearly Jason Momoa who is having the most fun with this movie. His character is flamboyantly evil, and Momoa plays him with gusto and panache. The character is written as a stylized villain, and the actor embraces the character the same way that John Lithgow took on Lord John Whorfin in the Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eighth Dimension. His costumes, hair, eyebrows and voice all scream "I'm the Bad Guy!! Pay Attention to Me!". It is exactly right, even the use of the extended arms in a crucified like position as a visual exclamation point that the character has a habit of posing in, feel like a comic book bad guy should be. The retcon sequence that brings Dante into the story is not as elaborate as the one that got Cena's Jacob in the last film, but it was managed well and it works. 

The one new wrinkle this film gives us is that it ends on a cliffhanger moment. All of our heroes appear to be doomed and the bad guy has won. There are several strings that you can pull at to come up with more story. For example Brie Larson could find her Dad Kurt Russell and start a new hunt on the villain. Jason Statham is on his way to protect his Mama from the bad guy, so that can be a path to follow. And Letty's new alliance with Theron's Cipher has been set up with a twist that I saw coming three movies ago. Regardless of all that potential, I am confident that the dead will rise, the strings will be tied up, and if Dante, Momoa's character is not sent to hell, he will become an anti-hero ally in entry number 12. I heard they were going to stop after the next one, but I also thought Han was dead. 

Bumblebee

I enjoyed the first of the "Transformers" movies, it was loud and full of explosions and destruction, but all that got a little tiresome as the sequels came. Since I was not a child in the 1980s, I barely knew what the Transformers were and probably missed the relationship that younger audiences had with the original cartoons. Still, it is a series based on a toy line, and that seems like the biggest product placement you can have. I assume it has been working, at least up to the last film which was apparently a bust and abysmal.

"Bumblebee" may not draw in the big bucks that the first three films managed, but it will go a long way to restoring some sense of purpose to the concept. This film still has big effects and robots bashing each other, but not nearly as much and the purpose is not to gawk at all the Metropolitan destruction on screen. The battles here are smaller, easier to follow for a number of reasons, and they are mostly connected to the story.

Hailee Steinfeld plays Charlie, an alienated teen (is there any other kind in the movies?), who discovers that the VW Beetle she owns, is not really a Bug, but rather an Apoidea. We see how the robot from another world got here and we know it's mission, but because of combat, it's memory has largely been lost and Charlie and Bumblebee have to figure out was is going on as the story unfolds. The thing that this film seems to get right is the relationship that Charlie and Bee develop together. It takes it's time evolving and there are bumps along the way, but by the end of the film, you can almost believe the tears that will be shed by these characters.

As usual, there is a subplot involving a secret organization of the military, tracking the presence of the robots on Earth. This film is set in 1987, so in essence it is a prequel/reboot of the original films, and thus humans can be deceived by Decepticons, even though we know that is what they call themselves. The smaller scale of the story allows for more coherent visualization of the battles. They are all almost one on one without having to shift angles and focus to close ups every 5 seconds. It made for a more relaxing but still exciting film. Jon Cena has the thankless role of the xenophobic military officer who needs to be enlightened. He is perfectly fine but he does seem like a stand in for Josh Duhamel or Mark Wahlberg.

To say that this is the best "Transformers" movie might be a little bold, but it is clearly more engaging than any of the sequels have been so it has that going for it. The 80s vibe is heavy so all the kids who really did love the cartoons should be happy and there is a good chance that a whole bunch of new wave acts will see a spike in their Spotify numbers in the next month or so. It is entertaining but not essential, go at your own level of desire to see this character, because that's it's real selling point. 

Blockers

This will be a relatively short post because there is on;y a little bit to say about this film. I had seen the trailer and thought that it was a raunchy comedy that I could safely skip. My wife had expressed a little interest but the butt chugging gag in the trailer was not promising. I'm going to blame the guys on one of the podcasts that I listen to for talking me into seeing this. They discussed it on one of their recent shows, and both of them thought it had some funny lines of dialogue. They were not impressed with the physical gags but thought there was a theme here worth looking at. Since I have been blocked myself [from seeing several other films until a certain member of the household was available] , it seemed right to give it a chance.

Indeed the film is raunchy. The parents act in some pretty stupid ways in their attempt to track down and stop their girls from making what they see as a mistake. There are three or four completely superfluous scenes that exist only for the humor and add nothing to the story. The aforementioned beer chugging sequence makes zero sense as soon as the parents identify themselves, but the contest goes on anyway. There is a car crash scene that gets laughed off, but of course in real life would entail huge consequences for those involved. The most extreme sections involve peeping into another home and catching the occupants engaged in some sexual activity. and then later returning to the same location, to break in, and ending up in a preposterous sex game which has nothing to do with the story. At least the sequence was honest enough to feature male frontal nudity rather than the traditional reveal of a nude woman. Gary Cole did his own reveal here and while it may not be my cup of tea, it was refreshing that the film treated men the way women are usually exploited.

One of the themes of the movie revolves around the sexist assumption that girls need to be treated differently in regard to their initiation into being sexually active. Indeed, that is a worthy goal but it is barely part of the story. First we have to have some version of naked "Sardines" with strangers, and then there has to be serial vomiting. The warm turn that the film takes in the last act is very typical of a teen film from the 80s or 90s. "Porkys", "American Pie", and "Clueless" all end up with more sincerity than you might expect. "Blockers " turns into a family story with the adults and children learning to accept one another despite the flaws that all of them have. This is not exactly original, but it turns out kinda sweet anyway.

The older stars are adequately over the top. Jon Cena and Leslie Mann are the central figures and both play the parts as you expect. Mann is a neurotic mother with attachment issues and a whinny voice, who pushes things forward. Cena is an overprotective dad who sees his girl as a child, despite the fact he has nurtured her into being a successful athlete. Ike Barinholtz ends up stealing the film from the others by having the most comic payoffs to his dialogue and the story that has the most to say about trying to parent a child and ultimately succeeding.

So it is not a great film, it has a few good laughs but it is not original and if you are a sympathetic vomit-er, you might want to skip out on it. The sex issues seemed to bother the parents more than all the drinking and drug use that is part of the story. The girls are fine and their arcs play out pretty much the way they are telegraphed. This movie is not really made for me, I could tell by the soundtrack playlist which featured no music ever heard by a baby boomer. The next generation of teen comedies seems to be moving forward without a need to appease the older crowd. That seems an apt result given the storyline.