Fast Five

I was so bored by the first Fast and the Furious that I haven't even bothered to see any of the previous sequels. Then I started seeing a lot of positive reviews for this one (the Onion AV Club even gave it a B and they hate everything), and it looked like it might be the kind of over the top unintentionally hilarious action that I generally enjoy (see Cliffhanger for an example) so I decided to check it out. I'm somewhat surprised to say that it actually kind of was entertaining. Oh its aggressively stupid and implausible, listen to this podcast for a pretty humorous breakdown, but so were most of Sly Stallone's films and it didn't stop be from enjoying/laughing at them. The acting is about what you would expect (though I did enjoy The Rock who spent the whole film turned up to 11), and it's twenty minutes too long, but overall surprisingly not sucky (technical term). I don't want to bother going through the plot holes since that's part of the fun, but the biggest thing it did reemphasize is how aggressively apathetic I am too anything involving cars. Seriously anytime they showed a slow motion sports car peeling out, or somebody staring intently while turning (which was often), my eyes just glazed over. To be fair the vehicles I have driven in my life are:

1978 VW Bus

1982 Volvo 740 GLE

1980 Honda Accord Wagon

1989 Honda Accord

1992 Toyota Camry

1994 Toyota Camry

So what do I know. Still the musical montage in Rocky IV remains my all time favorite movie car scene and that's only because Rocky shifts approximately 400 times while trying not to cry. Art.

So yeah Fast 5 - surprisingly not completely worthless and generally watchable in a really stupid, probably racist (mainly coming from the way they portray of Tyrese Gibson's character. Really a fast talking black guy who basically spends the entire file going "Awww Schnap"? Its practically a minstrel show), super loud kind of way.