Judgment out of the way: it was... not great. Honestly, it wasn't even good, but calling it 'not good' when it's so very earnest and really trying just feels mean. It's like picking on a mentally deficient puppy. The puppy doesn't mean to be stupid, it just wants to play and make you happy! The movie gives a very similar impression.
None of the jokes landed. The movie was not funny. It tried to be; it failed. There were two notable exceptions: a joke at the very end, like, the last three minutes, where Nate lovingly gives Sully a piece of bubblegum and Sully is like AW THANKS MAN in a genuine-ish tone and then tosses it out the window of the helicopter (that's something I would have done so I def appreciated it); and a meta joke delivered by Nolan North in a cameo that no one in the theatre but me appreciated. That joke wasn't funny on the page, it was the laziest iteration of "oh yes I played that guy", but I appreciated Nolan enough to laugh. (There was also this running joke about a very Scottish henchman that Nate couldn't understand. Having ridden Scotrail plenty of times in my life, I can definitely felt his pain there. But was it funny? Not at all. It was just tedious.) I remember thinking, 'god, I wish Taika Waititi had written this instead,' and then found myself wishing I was watching Thor: Ragnarok.
Mark Wahlberg was grievously miscast. He was such an unappealing Sully. They should have gotten a character actor for him, honestly. J.K. Simmons, maybe? But he dragged down every scene he was in with his bored line delivery. He and Tom Holland had zero chemistry, which meant the central emotional conflict of the story - will Nate and Sully learn to trust each other? - had no sizzle. It also didn't help that a secondary villain of the film is a woman, Jo Braddock, who is heavily implied to be Sully's former protégé and lover. And she's nearly thirty years younger than him (her actress is 26 to Mark's 50). It definitely had statutory rape vibes, which, uh. Not what I expected.
Overall, the script was terrible. The writing was very bland, the characters quite flat despite the best efforts of most of the cast. I didn't care about Nate's unresolved feelings about his brother which, I'm sorry to tell you, come up a lot. I didn't care who got the treasure. I didn't care when Sully threw away his treasure to save Nate. The story put all the strength of the conflict on "who will get the treasure" and not "will these untrusting people learn to compromise" and that's just... bad. In the games, you might care about Nate's mission because it's fun to get him there. The film didn't have that advantage due to the medium.
I did like most of the performances. Tom Holland was a lot of fun and he was trying his hardest! It wasn't his fault he had pap to work with. He did a great job with the physicality of the role and I loved watching his fancy mixology skills. Chloe's actress likewise did a great job with what little she was given; and I appreciated that she had a straight Australian accent rather than Claudia Black's very unique hybrid, although you could tell which scenes she filmed first by the accent slipping a bit.
There were also two mid-credit scenes and I was just like... it'll be hilarious if a sequel isn't greenlit after these combined two minutes thirty seconds of desperate sequel baiting.
tl;dr Don't pay to go to Cineworld for this film in particular. Wait until it's on Netflix.
That was the cutest edit ever.
None of the jokes landed. The movie was not funny. It tried to be; it failed. There were two notable exceptions: a joke at the very end, like, the last three minutes, where Nate lovingly gives Sully a piece of bubblegum and Sully is like AW THANKS MAN in a genuine-ish tone and then tosses it out the window of the helicopter (that's something I would have done so I def appreciated it); and a meta joke delivered by Nolan North in a cameo that no one in the theatre but me appreciated. That joke wasn't funny on the page, it was the laziest iteration of "oh yes I played that guy", but I appreciated Nolan enough to laugh. (There was also this running joke about a very Scottish henchman that Nate couldn't understand. Having ridden Scotrail plenty of times in my life, I can definitely felt his pain there. But was it funny? Not at all. It was just tedious.) I remember thinking, 'god, I wish Taika Waititi had written this instead,' and then found myself wishing I was watching Thor: Ragnarok.
Mark Wahlberg was grievously miscast. He was such an unappealing Sully. They should have gotten a character actor for him, honestly. J.K. Simmons, maybe? But he dragged down every scene he was in with his bored line delivery. He and Tom Holland had zero chemistry, which meant the central emotional conflict of the story - will Nate and Sully learn to trust each other? - had no sizzle. It also didn't help that a secondary villain of the film is a woman, Jo Braddock, who is heavily implied to be Sully's former protégé and lover. And she's nearly thirty years younger than him (her actress is 26 to Mark's 50). It definitely had statutory rape vibes, which, uh. Not what I expected.
Overall, the script was terrible. The writing was very bland, the characters quite flat despite the best efforts of
most ofthe cast. I didn't care about Nate's unresolved feelings about his brother which, I'm sorry to tell you, come up a lot. I didn't care who got the treasure. I didn't care when Sully threw away his treasure to save Nate. The story put all the strength of the conflict on "who will get the treasure" and not "will these untrusting people learn to compromise" and that's just... bad. In the games, you might care about Nate's mission because it's fun to get him there. The film didn't have that advantage due to the medium.I did like most of the performances. Tom Holland was a lot of fun and he was trying his hardest! It wasn't his fault he had pap to work with. He did a great job with the physicality of the role and I loved watching his fancy mixology skills. Chloe's actress likewise did a great job with what little she was given; and I appreciated that she had a straight Australian accent rather than Claudia Black's very unique hybrid, although you could tell which scenes she filmed first by the accent slipping a bit.
There were also two mid-credit scenes and I was just like... it'll be hilarious if a sequel isn't greenlit after these combined two minutes thirty seconds of desperate sequel baiting.
tl;dr Don't pay to go to Cineworld for this film in particular. Wait until it's on Netflix.