Review Roundup: TRAITOR, HAMLET 2, BABYLON A.D.
Welcome to Labor Day weekend, your final stop on the summer movie train. It’s the mini-wasteland between mid-summer blockbusters and the “serious” fall award hopefuls.
This weekend we’ve got five wide releases: an espionage thriller, an indie comedy, a sci-fi thriller, and two trashy teen laughers. Something for everyone right? Right? Guh.
:: TRAITOR
Rotten Tomatoes: 54 / 100
Metacritic: 60 / 100
filmcritic.com: 2 / 5
Without a Bourne movie to ogle over this summer — and the next Bond entry not here til Thanksgiving — where’s our spy thriller? This is something of an answer, minus the heavy action. The great Don Cheadle is a guy playing around with terrorists; Guy Pearce is an FBI agent who sees Cheadle as the center of a conspiracy.
Some critics consider Traitor a thinking man’s thriller; those not fond of it think the movie’s flat and a little predictable. Since Traitor’s Wednesday release, viewer response has been far more positive than critic reviews.
:: HAMLET 2
Rotten Tomatoes: 61 / 100
Metacritic: 54 / 100
filmcritic.com: 2.5 / 5
We’ve been inundated with good-time Hamlet 2 clips here at The Lobby as Focus Features wants the world to know about this Sundance favorite. Co-written by South Park’s Pam Brady, the comedy stars Steve Coogan (currently getting beaten up in Tropic Thunder) as a high-school drama coach who stages a tasteless Hamlet update, including a musical number called “Rock Me Sexy Jesus.” Elisabeth Shue and Amy Poehler are along for the fun (see above).
Although Hamlet 2 is one of the year’s wilder comedies, response has not been as universally positive as Universal would hope. And the box office came up a bit short in its limited-run first week, averaging only about $4200 a screen, disappointing for an anticipated premiere.
:: BABYLON A.D.
Rotten Tomatoes: 5 / 100
Metacritic: 27 / 100
filmcritic.com: 1 / 5
Uh oh. Vin Diesel just can’t find that groove. The guy was once an action star, a slick, tough-guy update to the ding-a-lings of the 1980s. Now, if his career ends tomorrow, his last great success will be Adam Shankman’s Disney comedy The Pacifier. That’s just not funny.
Babylon A.D. has already suffered director-vs.-studio issues (Mathieu Kassovitz unhappy with Fox’s participation), and a serious lack of preview screenings. Like none. When the studio and distributor actually want to avoid word-of-mouth, you know something’s wrong.
Diesel plays a delivery guy of sorts, hustling an important woman across a post-apocalyptic world. It really sounds like the kind of movie that action sci-fi fans love, but the consensus says Babylon A.D. is simply unchallenging and boring. Guess we’ll have to wait for Fast & Furious (stupid title, no?) in Spring 2009 for Diesel’s real return.
Oh those final two teen comedies mentioned above? College and Disaster Movie. What can we say, other than these two are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Wanna play a fun game this weekend? Try to find a positive review for Disaster Movie.
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Other Posts of Interest
- New Clips from HAMLET 2
- Trailer Tuesday: HAMLET 2
- Trailer Tuesday: DOUBT
- Review Roundup: SPEED RACER, WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS
- Review Roundup: GET SMART, LOVE GURU
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the previews for Babylon AD made me expect something a lot more original… it totally felt like a cross between Minority Report and the Fifth Element
- movie buff -
Yeah, The Fifth Element was mentioned a bunch of times when talking about Babylon A.D.
Here’s a strange connection: Babylon A.D. director Mathieu Kassovitz played a mugger in The Fifth Element. Which was directed by Luc Besson, so I guess a lot of those French performers know one another…
-Norm S. (Meet In the Lobby)
[…] Norm mentioned a few weeks back, this is the time where the studios pull out the big guns packing in all the […]