Rampage

Dwayne Johnson has made a presence in Hollywood in the past recent years (for better or worse) to the point of becoming his own genre. Making his acting debut since the earlier 2000s, he took sometime until he made himself a bankable star he is in regards to action and comedy. The perils he took in the time included some bland generic formulaic action flicks, bland Disney movies, and a decent cliched sports drama. The formula for his most common roles he's known for include being the strong muscular hero women are infatuated with, having solid charisma to work with any one-liner (no matter how bad it is), surviving many environmental attacks, and doing the most ridiculous physical feats (such as Fast 8 where during a chase on the ice, he grabs a torpedo that's launched toward him and flings it back at the enemy). This brings us to Rampage, another video game adaptation of the title of the same name which followed a simple premise: People would turn into monsters and wreck apart buildings on a city. It should be noted that the films director also did San Andreas with Dwayne, the marketing was aggressive in showing the action, and this gained a mixed critical reception. I went to an advanced screening ready to see what kind of fun it will provide and left it acknowledging that it's a mixed bag but has the potential to become a guilty pleasure.

Plot: The story follows a primatologist who teams up with an albino gorilla that's afflicted with a mutating virus to stop the threat of menacing monsters. Something that's based on a rather simple source material, one of the biggest issues is the storytelling. On one hand, when the bond between our main lead and the aforementioned gorilla is shown on screen, there's a legitimate emotional core that's pretty watchable (though not shown a lot). The intro sequence, while predictable, is pretty cool in that thrilling sense. Honestly the best thing about it is the delivery of the climax most have been waiting for.

However, apparently the writers felt that story actually matter in a monster film and tried shoehorning in subplots with different tones involved where dramatic finds itself contrasting with the goofy. While it's predictably cliched, it should have decided to stick with one style: It's either you go all in with the drama angle or full on silly, you can't have it both ways. The dialog accompanied throughout the film is pretty terrible, most of the time with how it's written (though the delivery is worse depending on the actor). The main problem is that there's an awesome monster fight audiences have been waiting for but you have to wait over an hour of human subplots that are tacked on to pad out the runtime until you get there. Instead of trying to be simple, the combination of everything that goes on before the last 15-20 minutes just drags down experience.

The last 15-20 minutes: When that climatic monster fight does come, it's everything awesome that Rampage should have been aiming for. Everything you would imagine a video game character to do is embodied in Dwayne Johnson's character as he fights alongside his albino gorilla (his monster bro) against two larger adversaries. The destruction within this climax is very faithful to the source material and contains a type of B-movie fun spirit that Rampage should have aimed for. The impact of every hit between the combatants is made for the big screen and if it weren't for everything else before this, the movie itself would be worth watching in theaters.

Monsters: There are three monsters to contend with: The albino gorilla from a zoo named George, a wolf mutated into a larger vicious form with squirrel gliders, and a gigantic mutated alligator. George is the only one of the creatures with motion capture use and is the most simple in design. The CGI used to create these giants is great to look at in terms of the details in their looks. The wolf actually deserves some credit for having a solid horror scene in the forest that stretches how PG-13 the violence can be, despite how goofy the gliders on his body looks. As for my personal favorite, it would be the alligator since you can tell how much the producers loved to add a lot of modifications in making him overpowered. His screen time, while limited, is worth checking out his destructive capabilities compared to the other two.

Humans: The people to focus on are Davis (Dwayne Johnson) and Dr Kate (Naomie Harris). Davis is a primatologist and head of an anti-poaching with a close friendship with George. Dwayne's charismatic performance is one of the best things keeping it entertaining and despite the script issues in regards to dialog/depth, he's capable of making it work most of the time. Dr Kate is a former employee of an evil corporation whose plot science importance adds some filler to the runtime. Naomie is sleeping walking in her acting since most of her dialog is plot exposition to move the movie forward but deserves credit for not becoming a love interest.

An honorable mention goes to Harvey (Jeffrey "Lean" Morgan) for being so weird and cowboy-ish that he becomes the right amount of silly that Rampage should have been aiming for. Dishonorable mentions go to Claire (Malin Akerman), Brett (Jake Lacy), and Burke (Joe Manganiello) with the former two being terrible in their performances as unnecessary villains (notably Malin being worse than Jake) while the latter is wasted in a well done horror scene.

Guilty Pleasure Potential: Everything about Rampage has the makings of becoming other guilty pleasure as it follows lame predictable cliches that could be so bad their good. The number of people that get killed off certainly puts itself in B-movie monster flick territory. The oddity that is Jeffrey Dean Morgan's performance is bizarre enough to warrant a look at how many times his standing stance is leaning all the time. Dwayne Johnson doing hit typical schtick helps deliver goofy corniness lines that are pretty bad. However, the terrible acting of Naomie Harris, Malin Akerman, and Jake Lacy sinks that guilty pleasure status down the drain.

Overall Consensus: Rampage struggles with tonal consistency in trying to be dramatic and corny simultaneously instead of sticking with one while having solid action, good leading hero, great CGI monsters but holds itself down with a horrible script and mixed acting. ⭑⭑1/2💻 Runtime: 1 hour 47 minutes PG-13

Reasons to watch it: You like any of the aforementioned actors. You like mindless nonsensical monster flicks with so much death and destruction of people and buildings. You are a fan of the video game source material. You don't mind terrible dialog being delivered with mixed results.

Reasons to avoid it: You dislike any of the aforementioned actors. You are annoyed with mindless nonsensical monster flicks with so much death and destruction of people and buildings. You aren't a fan of the video game source material. You hate terrible dialog being delivered with mixed results. You hate when actors are wasted in action films.

Coming up next: April Anticipation has hit a stumbling block from the blunders that accompanied the mindless Rampage. We've reached the halfway point and it's going to be a while until the biggest blockbuster most have been looking forward to arrives. In the meantime, tune in next time as Screening Spectacles will be taking a detour into a recent teen sex comedy that focuses on the shenanigans that go on during prom night with parents and their daughters, Blockers!!!