Fail to the Chief.
As Sony has so profoundly reminded me last week with a
double slap of everything that I hate about what I do, the dog days of summer
are upon us and the next few weeks are destined to be littered with the afterthoughts
of studio money grubbing that nobody asked for and nobody will see but will hit
anyway because Hollywood would rather sail straight into the iceberg than take
time to think things through for everyone’s benefit.
Of course, August is not the only month of the summer season
for dumping the dregs of Hollywood filmmaking.
In June 2015, the world was treated to the cinematic tidings
of “Max,” a film about a military dog taken in by the family of his partner,
recently killed in action under mysterious circumstances. Helping the dog adjust
to life outside of the battlefield is the troubled teenage son who of course
struggles with the loss of his brother by being an asshole.
“Max” was received by the world with a resounding meh,
earning a modest box office profit on a low budget for a movie so borderline
laughably saccharine, schmaltzy and predictable that I more vividly remember
the conversation that I had with a coworker in which we joked about the film’s
trailer practically telegraphing what little of a story there was than my
actual viewing experience of the film itself.
So with such a high pedigree of mediocrity in performance on
all aspects, the good folks at Warner Bros. saw fit to grant the film a direct
to video sequel in the form of “Max 2: White House Hero.”
This time however, there’s a twist to things; instead of
churning out a mediocre modern day half assed parody of a Hallmark channel original
movie that would have aired on a dull Saturday afternoon, the movie has now
become a miserable unintentional parody of a bad Disney kids flick from the mid
to late 90s.
The sequel in question sees Max brought in as a guard dog
for the secret service to replace a previous dog that is currently out of
commission which conveniently side steps needing to utilize any cast members or
reference events of the previous film. Ordinarily that would be a good thing
but when you don’t have anything to offer in return, it becomes more than a
little bit problematic.
“Max 2’s” story hones in on TJ, the lonely son of the
president that can’t cope with Daddy’s job of serving the country stepping on
his nonexistent social life. When the Russian president visits, along with his
daughter hoping to open up expanded peace talks for the future, things go awry
when the children are nearly kidnapped, launching a mystery of whose responsible
for attempting to sabotage diplomacy as a distraction for the true mystery of
the movie; who the hell cared about any of this?
I’ll give credit where its due towards the child actors;
they perform about as serviceably as one could in a production helmed by the
director of “Snow Dogs.”
Ultimately however, “Max 2” wastes no time revealing exactly
what it settles to be if it absolutely had to exist in the first place; an hour
and a half long babysitting video.
Any possibility the movie has to do something exaggerated or
even mildly subversive enough to at least be chuckle worthy is completely
sidestepped in favor of the old kids movie editing classics, such as the wacky
music, parents just not understanding, slow motion that isn’t really slow
motion, the same 3 or 4 sets for cost cutting measures, and villain reveal that
would have blown your minds were this movie made 30 years ago with characters
more dimensional than the flap of a greeting card. This thing is so paint by
numbers that I almost found myself speaking dialogue aloud alongside it.
But what ultimately kills “Max 2: White House Hero” is that
it never manages to be bad enough to be the fun kind of bad kids movie. It just
bounces back and forth between being predictable and annoyingly precocious.
No Shatners
Bottom Line: The moment the line, "He's moving out of the dog house..." was uttered by the trailer above, I instinctively muttered fuck you without letting it finish. That probably should have been a warning.
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