Monster
Trucks **
Dir: Chris Wedge. With: Lucas Till, Jane Levy, Rob Lowe, Amy
Ryan. 104 mins. Cert: PG
Here’s one of those barely-there studio timewasters that
exists chiefly as a pun and a pitch – Fast & Furious for preteens, Transformers
without the leering – bulked out with a thick carapace of pixels. Somewhere
within that, there’s a workably goofy comic-strip premise: high-school loser
Trip (Lucas Till, buffed to the point of blandness) gets to leave his rivals
and troubles for dust after a gas-guzzling extra-terrestrial squid assumes residence
beneath the bonnet of his battered pick-up.
Switching to live action fifteen years after directing the
first Ice Age, Chris Wedge hits upon
pockets of mild throwback charm. The alien lifeforms bash out Close Encounters notes on one of those
old Simon memory games; inevitably, there’s an E.T.-like scene in which Trip and pals have to race away from the
armed minions of Rob Lowe’s evil oil-drilling empire. (Green viewers might
applaud were it not for the attempt, via the squid, to make fuel consumption
appear cute and cuddly.)
It is very mild,
however – its stunt driving forever more functional than exciting – and the
emphasis on petrolheaded boys and their big, big toys leaves the women in the
over-qualified cast with precious little to do: Jane Levy has to dial down her
usual intelligence and wit to fit the role of adoring love interest, while
erstwhile Academy Award nominee Amy Ryan has but half a scene in the
retro-regressive role of “Mom”. It has tentacles and hot wheels, yes, but not
the legs or bright ideas to sustain itself.
Monster Trucks opens in cinemas nationwide today.
No comments:
Post a Comment