Monday, April 11, 2005

Because You Care

Yet another inarticulate movie review.

I'm really not sure about Sahara. It feels like a movie that I should like, in that it's inoffensive and full of gratuitous action sequences, buried treasure, and shirtless Matthew McConaughey, but yeah, not so much.

I mean, it had funny parts, Steve Zahn continues to be awesome, the soundtrack was hilariously sweet and James-Bond-ripoff-y, and there was indeed a lot of shirtless Matthew McConaughey, but there was also:
  • Peneope Cruz, who, I'm sorry, registers no human emotion with me. She is the most placeholder of a female lead that I have ever witnessed. Virtually any other actress I will have at least some comment. Her? Umm, yeah seriously, nothing. Nothing to say against/for her acting, her personality, or her hotness. It's like she exists outside my available realm of interest.
  • A B-plot that was just like Outbreak only, a) there was no cool monkey, and b) no hilariously over-acting Dustin Hoffman. Way to make me not care, movie that was supposed to be about Civil War gold in the Saharan desert.
  • A C-plot (because an action movie needs a C-plot, of course) about, what, nuclear waste and the destruction of all life on Earth? Hmm, yes. While throwing together 14 random action sequences that no one should come remotely close to surviving is a staple of my action movie love, do we seriously need to keep piling on pointless story after pointless story? Because I'm pretty sure there is also along the way, another thread about the CIA and shirtless Matthew McConaughey's boss, and one about a civil war in an African nation, and....yeah.

So, I feel like this movie should have grabbed one story, stuck to it and threw all the action sequences in anyway, shoehorning them in, each more ridiculously contrived than the last. I thought it was a bad sign when 4 authors were listed under the Written By line, and I was totally spot on. Generally any movie that with shirtless Matthew McConaughey gets my thumbs up, and yet, here we are. Poor form, writers.

Um, yeah. So I am impossible to please. My name is Jason and I disapprove of this movie.

1 comment:

deh-vin said...

Matthew Mc-whatever's character seemed fairly intent on finding out why this large ship went all the way to Africa...and like myself, he apparently became too excited about bombs, so he jumped on Penelope's end of the world story. Was I that distracted by the shiny mirrors that I missed the answers to the questions that seemed to drive one of the story lines at the beginning of the film? I wish I had gone to get a coke. And maybe a bathroom break.