drenstere

If you're of a certain age, this one will resonate with you. Lots of King notes here especially, but watered down just enough to keep from traumatizing the audience too much. Some cool nods to kid's film casts of old, a solid cast of future heavyweights of the screen and a decent spot for Mel Gibson and Kevin James to flourish. Clunky dialogue in a few spots but I think it's because the movie itself is purposefully nebulous in where it wants to end up, audience-wise. I liked it. I think audiences down to about ten will love it. Ignore the low box office numbers and overly negative reviews. This one is well worth a watch on a rainy day.

Obviously by now most everyone knows the fate of Bruce Willis, and he has plenty in the 'blockbuster' category to justify his star on the HWoF. He also has a lot of relationship baggage etc, the entirety of which is his alone to deal with. That this "Lifetime-B" level script tries to call upon that overarching regret is not the most egregious thing. Indeed, many aging actors (Eastwood immediately comes to mind) use their twilight-era films to send messages of farewell, regret, etc to those that the star affected in the past. That our Brucie is so far gone that he can't see that connection with the nakedness of the script showed that his condition had been deteriorating long before anyone a press release was made on it (release date was a full two years before, but it's obvious to anyone that knows his work that this is almost a different person in a BW bodysuit. I'm glad that he kept on going until he couldn't go anymore, because he was doing something he loved, but this was...not good. There would be thirteen additional films released after this one over the two years following 'Survive' and now I'm curious about what the production staff saw in their execution or if he rallied a bit before the end.

Buckner and Olsen especially have decent to good contributions to this film and are evocative of the emotions you expect of thoughtless villains. Unfortunately they can't come close to rescuing the poor writing and critical state of the lead's skills/health in this film, much less the rest of the cast who seem to be making their debuts on any screen with the level of wooden vanilla that gets brought to the table. I had to find Murray to remember where I had seen him before (Fruitvale Station) but this appearance had nothing remarkable that you wouldn't see somewhere else in his filmography. Make this film even three to five years prior to filming then Willis likely is still strong enough to carry the cast and even bring out the best in them, especially Murray. Alas...

...and wasted their time on possibly the most disjointed film I've seen this year. I'm not sure if terrible writing or worse direction is to blame here. Perhaps the talent was secured first and the crew just winged a story. Perhaps there were legit writer issues of some type. Maybe all of the above.