Review of Last Action Hero (1993) by Clem666 — 08 Feb 2021

The original idea was awesome. The first forty minutes of the movie are amazing: the pace is excellent, we (as spectators) must use our intelligence to truly understand the its location and atmosphere and the relations between characters. The balance between 'reality' and 'movie' (movie-ception) is great. At the beginning it is really hard to see where the plot is leading us. And that makes it original. But as soon as the plot define itself the movie get bogged down in facilities and effortless work.

Schwarzenegger is epic. He doesn't hesitate to caricature himself. But Danny (Austin O'Brien) is horrible. He can't stop defending his thesis while just using the ticket to prove its abilities is far more intelligent. He only becomes useful and interesting at the very end of the movie. All along he is just that shallow normal annoying kiddo. I just can't stand his face. Charles Dance as the villain is incredible. Really solid performance. Costumed are great excepting the fact that all cops women wear latex and indecent clothes.

The overall universe is terrific. There are so many jokes and easter eggs that some mathematically have to make you laugh. Many of them happen thanks to Schwarzenegger. And that is what happened to me. The movie made me laugh hard some times, and that's rare and priceless. There are many impressive meta-jokes. Some scenes are amazingly quotables thanks to all this action-style.

I found it marvelous that such a movie had such balls to criticize Hollywood, its actors and system. But the film ends sadly by entering into these clichés that he brilliantly denounced. Ending is terrible. It seems like a happy ending but wait...