Rampage - Giant Ape Balls Ahead!

Dwayne is back into being the charming, super-ripped, former Special Forces, who has more ability to punch a monster in the face than follow social norms. This time he's playing the role of 15th guy from the 4th level of the original video game. Plus 3 monsters destroy Chicago and Don Jr. makes his acting debut. Thanks to the incredibly bad decisions of corporate scientist CEOs (whatever that is), we are treated to three genetically mutated former critters that eventually get to big and start smashing crap. You can imagine what that's like. So let's talk about everything else. Dwayne is fantastic in his putting on a show. Ok, he's not exactly going to win any awards (probably ever) but he has pretty solid chemistry with something that doesn't exist. He's charming us while acting next to a not existent giant monster. Pretty solid stuff there. Monster design works. This walks that fine line between too much and too little creature design and showcasing them. They look great. Jake Lacy - wow. Absolutely steals the show away from Dwayne. His frat-boy, daddy paid my professors, CEO (see recent President's sons) performance is legit theater LOL worthy. He kills it. Too much exposition. Sadly the first half isn't a page turner. There's a sprinkle of good stuff here and there but to try to make some semblance of believability they thought they could cram in far too much backstory here and way to much science talk over here. None of it matters! We came to see monsters fighting The Rock. Just do that! However, for the most part, this film gets 90% of its popcorn-eating film genre work done well. Unfortunately, the draggy-ness of the exposition keeps it from being a fully enjoyable experience. With that all said, it's still clearly the best-made video game movie in history - which isn't really saying much.