First movie to Arnie Month with Last Action Hero

I had a great idea a while back; let me catch up on all the Arnie movies I have missed. Problem is I have not seen many of his movies, only the ones that the general public consider "bad". These include Jingle All the Way and Junior. So I decided to dedicate a month to Arnie. And I decided on “Last Action Hero” for the more ironic reasons that it sums up typical Arnie shoot ‘em up movies. But I originally wanted to watch his movies in chronological order, but it is hard to get “Hercules in New York”. Nevertheless I share with you my thoughts of my first viewing of Last Action Hero after the jump.

The story seems like it was straight out of a kid’s movie. Where a movie crazed young boy by the name of Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) is given a magical ticket that allows him to enter the movie world. He then accidentally enters the world of Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger), his favourite over the top action hero. But as he is enjoying the life of the movie world, Slater’s enemy Benedict grabs a hold of the magical ticket and travels into the real world. Both Jack and Danny need to defeat Benedict against all of Jack’s knowledge of how everything works, because the real world isn’t the same as the movies.

In Slater's world, Stallone does Terminator.

First off, I wasn’t too sure how to approach this movie; I actually thought this was going to be a typical Arnie movie: cheesy lines, over the top action and less than stellar acting. But these were all done on purpose, for satire reasons. I figured out early that this was not your typical action movie. It is more a comedy than anything. So that is how I saw this movie, as a comedy and took nothing too serious.

And the comedy brought chuckles; it plays off every Hollywood stereotype. All the women are super beautiful, no one reloads their guns, good guys always win and everyone says lame puns. And that is why I found it funny, they purposely try to be cheesy and over the top and it works. It definitely put a smile on my face. Only problem is, because I knew this movie was purposely cheesy Arnold’s terrible lines weren’t as funny. You know, every one but “Rubber baby buggie bumpers”.

Slater's first reactions to the new 'real' world.

And I must admit, the action was pretty good. They were over the top, goofy and just amazing to watch visually. Even though the special effects were dated and did not stand the test of time. This might have just added to the cheesiness to it. And even the action added onto the humour, there were scenes where cars would just blow up in the air or flip over endlessly even though it would be physically impossible. In these cases, it just works. And because this movie isn’t so serious the movie came off little bit as a child’s movie. The story could have easily been enjoyed by a kid. It is silly, goofy and has a feel good attitude in the end.

I liked watching Last Action Hero; it wasn’t all that good technically. Let’s face it; the special effects are terrible, the action is way to goofy to be taken seriously and ironically the movie did feel very Hollywood. But if you take this movie as a 2 hour comedy skit, this can easily be entertaining when thought of as a comedy. I hope I am not the only one that feels this way.