Netflix Movie Review: Red Notice


When the movie “Red Notice” was released only in theaters last week, I wondered why it was only appearing in one theater out of many in my area. The reason is, that this movie is more of a cookie cutter, hashed together story based on about 10-15 movies that have already been made several times before.

I recognized “Midnight Run”, several “Mummy” movies, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and about 3 James Bond movies. Once again this is another example of a bad script that was made, for reasons unknown, and then somehow fell into production either by accident or total blunder. Then when it was too late – the thinking was, “lets throw 3 well known actors into this bad movie, and try to get our money back”. What is most unusual about Ryan Reynold’s acting career is that he seems to be the exact same soft talking sarcastic person in every role within movies like this. It will be interesting to realize when this finally gets too old and boring to continue.

Unfortunately due to the few theaters this film is playing in, and now after only a week its already on Netflix, the odds are high that this is a going to be a losing investment, even with Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot, in the starring roles. The other thing I noticed this time around, was that the 3 stars are all making huge efforts by going on all the late night talk shows to promote to try and save this mostly bad 2 hours.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for Red Notice are an extremely low 40% and I agree with this assessment and do not recommend this movie.

Movie Review: Jungle Cruise


Some years ago, some Disney executive probably said, “Why can’t we combine the African Queen with Raiders of the Lost Ark?” From this one idea the odds are pretty high that the new movie starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, called “Jungle Cruise” was created. The problem is that this movie was probably made as a vehicle for two of the hottest actors right now, rather than writing a great story first and then getting the actors later. I could be wrong, but after seeing Jungle Cruise this sure seemed like the most likely scenario.

The start of this story seemed so familiar with the start of “Raiders Of the Lost Ark”, in this case there is a disease curing leaf of an impossible to find tree, somewhere in the jungle. Dr. Lily Houghton, played by Emily Blunt has to travel to the Amazon and rent a boat, captained by Frank Wolff, played by Dwayne Johnson. Once they meet, this entire movie is an excuse to create one action scene after another – and it all seems like we have seen this many times before. There is nothing new here, nothing memorable. This is not a bad movie, but definitely not a good enough movie to recommend, despite the special effects that at times were good.

I agree with the low 63% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and rate this film a pass.