Last Action Hero (1993, 130 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107362/
Pretty much on a whim, a friend that was over selected this to watch. I was hesitant because I had quite low expectations. It just didn't seem like something I'd like from the description.
The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as Jack Slater (and himself) in this two timeline action movie. Basically, a kid named Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) gets a magic ticket from his friend Nick (Robert Prosky) at the theater. He soon ends up transported to the movie he's watching complete with bad guys out to kill him. The main bad guy is Benedict (Charles Dance) but Frank (Art Carney) has a small role as well.
The great thing about this movie is how much it makes fun of action movies. It's completely absurd in everything it does in the "movie universe" of Jack Slater. There's purposeful errors all over the place such as Slater standing and firing his handgun at least fifteen times without reloading. Similarly, every bullet seems to cause a car to go out of control and cause a huge (fake) explosion. I'm a big fan of this style as it's just really fun to watch. Also, this movie constantly makes fun of the frequent use of one-liners in Arnold (and other action) movies by putting in as many as possible. Characters are given crazy names just so that they can be the butt of a joke later. Overall, this aspect of the film is probably hit-or-miss (just like most satire) but for me it really worked as the selling point of the movie.
The director of this movie also directed Die Hard so it's apparent that the guy can direct a good action movie if he wants. He chose to direct this way instead and I think he managed to create a good blend of a real action movie and a fake joke action movie. The real action comes off as quite fun, while the fake action is just as exciting. The movie does, in my opinion, appear well polished and thought through, which gives everything a nice finishing touch. What I'm saying is that there is a professionalism to all the absurdism that runs through the film.
The one aspect I didn't like of Last Action Hero was how Slater realized he was all imaginary. This point could have been made to be really corny and cheesy or it could have raised interesting questions. Instead, it somewhat fizzled in the middle ground and didn't really do anything. Choosing one or the other would have really helped the final third of this movie. As it stood, this point was brought up only briefly during really what amounted to a transition scene between more action.
Overall, I gave this film a 7/10. Imagine Mulholland Dr. mixed with Die Hard and then trim the result to give it a PG-13 rating and you have Last Action Hero. This is a hilariously fun movie that's absolutely worth a watch.
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