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Pain and Gain, Michael Bay’s “Point Break with bodybuilders” movie (which is actually based on a true story) starring Mark Wahlberg and The Rock, hits April 26th, and just screened at CinemaCon yesterday to, um, reviews. The big question is, does Michael Bay still remember how to shoot human beings after three straight movies about robots? The good news is, he never did!
Here’s a new clip, which in just 42 seconds manages to lay out the Michael Bay blueprint for a scene. His secret? Every minor character is just one over-the-top, skin-deep gimmick, which then becomes both comic relief and plot point. In this case, it’s a gun store clerk who turns out to be a huge Stryper fan. The Rock and the boys tell him they’re cops, and he doesn’t believe them, but The Rock sees a Stryper sticker on the register and tells the clerk that they’re actually doing security for Stryper. Pretty soon he and the clerk are singing Stryper together right there in the gun store and everything works out okay! Haha, hilarious! Good thing the Stryper sticker didn’t turn out to be from another clerk, or any number of other infinite, more interesting possibilities!
Anyway, here’s the early word on the movie, from what I can gather from my Twitter follows:
Michael bay’s $25 million pain and gain is an impeccably crafted noisy soulless depressing enterprise. Dumb male demo.#cinemacon
— Anne Thompson (@akstanwyck) April 16, 2013
Pain & Gain was even better than I wanted it to be. Very dark, every character is hilariously stupider than the next. Awesome soundtrack.
— Peter Sciretta (@slashfilm) April 16, 2013
Michael Bay has discovered the secret to total review immunity (besides making movies about giant robots punching each other): that if you just make the same movie over and over again enough times, people will stop reviewing it in any traditional sense of the word, and instead just evaluate it in the extremely narrow context you’ve created for yourself. “Well it’s not very good, but it’s certainly Michael Bay-y! B+! Two so-so hands waffling WAY in the middle!”
More:
While “Pain & Gain” may have been smaller in scope than the “Transformers” series, it’s got loads to offer in different respects. We won’t be running a full review until closer to the film’s April 26th release, but know that Bay really pushes the boundaries when it comes to melding humor with some truly dark and often vicious material.
“Pain & Gain” is on the long side and you can certainly feel it, but the film’s ability to get you to enjoy watching three rather unlikeable leads is quite the achievement.
I’m very disappointed that this writer didn’t go with “Pain & Gain is on the long side and you can certainly feel it, feel it.”
[clip via ThePlaylist]
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To be fair I believe Tim Burton stumbled onto this formula first
From the title I’ll assume they are window washers.
Vince doesn’t like it? Sounds great! This drooling frat shithead always likes crappy movies.
“This drooling frat shithead never likes high art like Michael Bay!”
I thought Vince was more douchebag hipster. We need a chart for put down categorizations.
Vince describes himself as a “Bro” in his stand up routine, but his opinions and general slant on things skews more twee Portlandia hipster. And he looks like the lovechild of Peyton Manning and William Katt.
Which makes him the Greatest American Bro-ster.
Good lord, crawl out of his butt. That’s creepy as fuck.
It’s crazy how people in real life don’t fall perfectly into stereotypes created by lazy TV writers.
But is he more of a Charlotte or a Samantha?
“It’s crazy how people in real life don’t fall perfectly into stereotypes created by lazy TV writers” is such a Samantha thing to say.
Actually, every gun store clerk is a Stryper fan, so that scene is completely believable.
Stryper was always great to see on Headbangers Ball back in my youth. It meant I could channel surf over to Cinemax and see what Sylvia Kristel was up to. Sometimes I didn’t make it back to MTV.
Ah, misspent youth.
$25 million was the explosion budget right? There’s no way Michael Bay spent that little on an entire movie…
Damn that Ann Thompson is sexist as all hell bro.
So help me, I really want to see this. The actual Sun-Times story is so completely ridiculous and insane, and the actual people involved so goddamned stupid (that the police didn’t even initially believe they actually did it), that it actually reads like a Michael Bay script.
The lyrics the Rock is singing aren’t Stryper lyrics, for what it’s worth. Maybe Bay wanted to use Stryper for the scene but not pay royalties etc. to do so?
those tweets only make me want to see this more.
Thompson’s criticism sounds like an endorsement to most guys.
“every character is hilariously stupider than the next”
So the characters get progressively smarter as they are introduced?
what is this
i don’t even