This movie was about as stupid a movie as I expected. What I didn’t expect was the dialog which was all over the place, the meaningless scenes and the tedious boredom throughout most of this idiotic waste of 2 hours. Some of the conversations between members of this crew of men who drive around to different locations stripping and performing hardly made sense in a number of instances.  What did stand out for me is that there are some real people in this world who really do something this stupid for a living.   How ridiculous a life is this anyway to drive around to seedy clubs to have dollar bills thrown at you by drunk women bars?  The other thing that stands out for me was how badly some of these actors wanted to be an actor in a movie and are willing to embarrass and humiliate themselves in front of millions of movie goers. On numerous different occasions there were men dancing around crowd of women and the floor was loaded with dollar bills and I wondered how do they figure out who gets all this movie? How do they divide the hundreds of dollar bills fairly. For me this was the only mystery of this movie. Who gets all this money? How do they divide it all up?

The bottom line is that some of the actors in this movie will never work again after this disaster and others, including Channing Tatum will work again.  I was very happy to see this movie end but unfortunately it was almost a full 2 hours of just one ridiculous stupid road trip to bars a beach and some houses.

Do yourself a favor and miss this very stupid movie.

Screenwriting Tips

Convoluted and very stupid. This is how I would summarize one of the most ridiculous plot lines ever created for any movie in movie history. Once again the emphasis was not to create a great script with great dialog and a coherent story, but forego all of the quality in place of special effects.

Of course the original movie made in 1984 had a ridiculous plot idea about time travel and sending back a man who would be his father? What? Your kidding right? How could he exist in the first place if in the future he had to send a man back in time to be his father? Even if time travel were possible, none of this would make any sense. I can understand a person going back in time, but not to create himself in the first place with a father who had not even been born yet? This is insane, but the action scenes and the idea of robots and the end of the world were compelling enough to enjoy the first movie.

This latest Terminator movie “Terminator Genisys” had some great action sequences but a story and logic that completely made no sense. This movie revisited some ideas and scenes from the first movie, but then we are made to believe that a whole new time line was created when Kyle Reese goes back in time like he did in the original movie and now they had to go into the future to the year 2017 to stop the second or new attempt by Skynet to destroy the world and kill off all mankind? If time travel were to ever exist, of course it would never make any sense to go into the future that has yet to be created. I could understand going back to 1984 and then back to where you were or some years earlier, but this idea of going into a yet to be created future is ridiculous. All I would ask from a movie like this that is so full if ideas and science is to make a story that can be followed, has some logic to it and most importantly makes sense. There is another story line where the Terminator Robot played once again by Arnold Schwarzenegger was sent back in time to protect a 9 year old Sarah Conner, who she now calls “Pops”. This is another overly complicated and additional story line about time travel that was not necessary and made no sense. I thought the actress who plays Sarah Conner, Emilia Clarke was not only excellent in the role, but has one of the most attractive faces I have ever seen. She will have a huge future in the movie business due to her acting ability and exceptional presence on screen.

As far as all of the other Terminator movies, the second Terminator movie was much better than the first. This movie had everything, great special effects, a great script and great dialog. Terminator 2 is one of the very rate sequels that was better than the first movie. Terminator 3 was a good movie, not as good as the first 2 with some great action sequences. The 4th Terminator called “Terminator Salvation” was just a very bad movie.

Now one has to wonder based on the ending of this 5th Terminator movie where this franchise could go next? How can a new idea be written considering how this one ended? Hopefully whatever new idea is created, its much better than this one, which was completely ridiculous and made no sense on about 5 different levels.

Overall, I do recommend this movie but only for the action scenes and special effects. The story and plot are just plain ridiculous throughout.

The problem with Hollywood

In order to get a movie into Sundance, or perhaps break into the movie business as a new writer, you have to be very different. Different is fine and OK if its interesting or very funny and a good example of this is the movie “Napolean Dynamite, which came out in 2004. This movie was highly unusual and downright weird but it was funny so you liked it. “Napolen Dynamite” was so different than anything you had seen before so the movie was a surprise hit. This movie, “Me and Earl and the dying Girl” attempts to be very different and weird and unlike anything you have seen before. The problem with this movie is that in many areas its too different, weird and unusual to make it a very good movie or a very funny movie. The subject of the dying girl in this story is the central theme of the entire movie and while this can be both touching and depressing at the same time, the premise is too sad to make the other parts of the movie; the parts that try to be funny or very different successful.

Overall I liked this movie and the attempts to be very different and funny, but for the most part, it was not funny enough to overcome the many flaws that include the fact that this movie is trying to be too weird and different to be an effective story. Different and quirky has to be paired with quality and while this movie had much of that, for me it just quite didn’t have enough.

I am neutral on this movie, so I cannot recommend or not recommend it. This movie should be seen by anyone who wants to see something different and something they have never been seen before.

Writing a movie to be different