This thing has road rash written all over it

By: daforce
Date: Monday, February 19, 2007

So I got to see the night before opening night for free.

Thank, Buddha, Ganesh, and any other deity or deities involved!

This was bad. Not a so bad it was good, but a bad in the way that you're noticing time passing kind of bad. First off, the special effects are the best thing about this turkey. And since GR doesn't show up until about 25-35 minutes into the flick, that's not saying much. It also doesn't say much when two actors hired to portray the younger versions of your main stars are much better actors than your main stars.

Peter Fonda as Mestophiles. Wow. Bad actors anonymus has nothing on the egg he laid in this role. I guess he thought that if he just kept his chin to his chest the entire time, that he'd look menacing. He didn't. I've seen kittens that were more menacing then his acting here. Maybe if someone had shot him up with a dose of smack before filming it would have helped his performance.

To the trying-to-look-goth dude that played Blackheart. Worst. Villian. Ever. No menace, no evil, no acting lessons obviously. Completely forgettable.

Eva Mendes. Her tits had much more screen presence than her acting did. There were so many moments of her in the movie that were embarassing (due to her lack of acting) more than anything else. There's actually a scene where her cleavage is pretty much spotlighted and the first thing we see, that had the audience laughing because it was so blatantly obvious as to why she was in the movie and it definitely wasn't her 'acting' ability.

Then there's Nic 'Elvis' Cage. Jesus Christ. He started with the Elvis impersonations slowly, but by the end he was doing a full blown 'Elvis Claw' at every fucking chance. At least it distracted the audience from Nic's toupe slipping over to the side. I still say they should have gone with the CGI toupe on Nic, it would have been more realistic.

The plot was mediocre at best. Although, I do have to admit that I enjoyed the first part of the movie that didn't include Cage or Mendes. I was almost embarassed for Sam Elliot in this too. His character has no reason to be there other than to tell the main character what his powers are. So sad.

Also sad was the fact that there was a good story hiding in here, but it needed a competent writer, director, and actors to bring it to the forefront. What could have been a cool story about curses, demonic possession, regret, and ultimate redemption, instead was turned into a mediocre videogame that played like a sitcom. The only thing missing were the fart jokes.

Rating: Cable viewing. Save your money.

Click here to read the staff review by Mania.