Fast Month - The Fast and the Furious

It’s time to go full Throttle: It’s Fast Month

A Franchise that grew from humble beginnings to a multi-million-dollar behemoth, the Fast and Furious certainly managed to hit the right balance to remain profitable, despite reception of the movies themselves not always being great. Throughout the month of June, I’ll be looking at the 8 current instalments of the franchise and giving my brief thoughts on all of them.

Just a heads up (sponsored by Coca Cola, though not really), Paul Walker may be mentioned in these reviews, not always in a positive light, if that makes you uncomfortable, check out my Iron Fist retrospectives or something, he plays a lead character, I can’t exactly shy away from it. (This was sponsored by Coca Cola, though not really - if you don't get the joke, watch the stupid as f*ck safety warning at the beginning)

With that said, let’s start at the beginning with The Fast and the Furious. Made on a modest budget of $37m, it made $207m at the box office. Not bad for a film about street racing, but modest compared to what this franchise would later earn. It had a mixed reception critically, with a 53% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average score of 5.4/10 and a 6.7/10 IMDb rating. But here are my thoughts.

#40 Dude, Where's My Car?

Comedy! It’s great, I love slapstick, I love standup, I love visual gags, I love witty dialogue, I love sarcasm, oh boy do I love sarcasm and I love ranting about things that don’t matter. Comedy! What I don’t like is Dude, where’s my car?

Dude, where’s my car came out in 2000 and was greatly successful, earning $73m on only a $13m budget. There were actually talks about a sequel but the scripts were ultimately shot down by Ashton Kutcher, he had such greats as Texas Rangers to be in, what a success that was.

But seriously, this movie was panned by critics at its time, with an 18% rotten tomatoes and a 30 on metacritic but in recent years, and partially thanks to multiple airings on television, it’s gained a bit of a cult following. But don’t think I’m being fooled, I’m going to tear this movie a new one, let’s dive in.

Mini Review - Looper

This was initially intended to be a guilty pleasure review but upon closer examination I’ve realised something, there’s just not enough material for me to do so. GP reviews tend to fall into 1 of 2 categories, one is the movies which I enjoy in spite of their flaws out of legitimate passion for what they’re adapting. The Dark Knight Rises and Daredevil (and arguably Iron Man 3) are prominent examples.

The vast majority however are movies with lots of sci-fi silliness, not intended to be taken very seriously. This allows me to have fun pointing out some of the sillier parts of the plot whilst at least enjoying it because its tone works. The other thing about guilty pleasure movies, there tend to be problems scattered throughout the movie, I would argue this isn’t really the case with Looper.

Looper’s certainly seen some good reviews, holding a damn good 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and 84% on metacritic. In the box office it held its own, making $180m (give or take) on a $30m budget, hardly blockbuster territory but it’s not what this story was aiming for.