Double-Trouble #2: The Dark Tower VS Wish Upon
Welcome, one and all, to my second Double Trouble segment. This is where I review two movies in shorter segments when I don’t feel they would be fitting for my usual format. Last time on Double Trouble #1 we took a look at Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and Baywatch. Up next we have The Dark Tower and Wish Upon. One of them is one of the best times I have ever had going to the movies and would happily watch it again and the other is The Dark Tower.
The Dark Tower
Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor) keeps having nightmares involving a man in black (Matthew McConaughey) and his attempts to destroy a dark tower. His nightmares of the tower being under attack somehow correlates to a series of Earthquakes that are being felt all across the globe. Jake then also dreams about a gunslinger (Idris Elba) and his desire to kill the man in black. After outrunning creatures sent to apprehend him, Jake then finds himself on another world joining the Gunslinger to kill the man in black and prevent the tower from being destroyed. To describe the story in deeper detail would imply I cared. I didn’t. And given how the movie turned out I don’t think the filmmakers did either.
I will be honest and state that I wasn’t looking forward to another Stephen King adaptation since you can find any number of them filling up bargain bins at any Walmart and they are rarely exceptional. Based on my experience with them, the less faithful they are to the source the better they are. And the ones that are adapted faithfully are stupid. The Langoliers, The Tommyknockers, It and many others are all stories that had decent ideas and buildups but incorporate too many reused elements from his other works making the stories predictable and have disappointing or just flat out stupid endings. But seeing how this was based on his novels that were more adventure than horror, I would give it a try as I have heard good things from friends and family. I will admit though that the only two adaptations I watch over and over are The Shawshank Redemption (1994), which I would argue will still be a great movie without the association of Stephen King, and The Shining (1980) which King hated so much he had a TV mini-series of it made in the 1990s to, I guess, make up for the movie. But given how the miniseries version is more or less forgotten and the movie lives on to this day tells me Stanley Kubrick did something right.
But the only thing that the trailer (the one I kept seeing in just about every movie I saw this summer) sold me was the most generic Hollywood film of good vs evil where there is something massively important that needs to be protected, some kid plays an extremely important role or has some great destiny or power, and that the heroes were defending our world from the coming of some darkness. That is just what the movie happened to be if slightly worse, considering the final product came off as a lame young adult novel adaptation and we have no shortage of those.
Having a story where heroes fight off evil forces is something I’m ok with as long as the rest of the story is unique in other areas and the characters pick up the slack. But alas what we were sold and what we ultimately got was an adaptation that just feels sloppy. Even having not read the books, I could feel that the filmmakers were not interested in taking their time in crafting a world on the screen for the audience to get immersed in which would help us to care about what happens in the world and what happens to the characters. But it was clear that the filmmakers had no real ambition for this property and just wanted to squeeze a product out the door. Seriously, for a project that Hollywood has been trying for years to adapt to the screen it kind of stuns me that the final product is a listless 95-minute chore. I was under the impression that the Dark Tower books is a huge series with a vast world and mythology so why in the world would they do something similar to what happened to Eragon (2006) (you know…that somewhat decent 400+ page young adult fantasy book that had promise as a movie and was turned into an atrocious 106-minute Star Wars/Lord of the Rings mashup with heavier emphasis on the former)?
If the adaptation feels like an afterthought, so does the rest of the movie. Apart from a fairly decent sequence of the Gunslinger racking up an impressive body count near the end, the action isn’t engaging or visually stimulating (in fact, this whole film epitomizes bland sci-fi action adventure that is nothing we haven’t seen before), besides McConaughey’s scenery chewing “not give a crap” performance which always brightened up the film, I don’t know if I can judge the acting from everyone else because I didn’t really see them doing any. Idris Elba does what he can with a script that gives him nothing to really work with as his gunslinger character just comes off as some gruff guy with a chip on his shoulder. Tom Taylor isn’t really giving a good performance (but I don’t blame him since really no one is good in this) and his character’s camaraderie with the Gunslinger feels forced and seems like the movie is telling us to like them because…reasons.
There is an interesting phenomenon that happens to me when I start to get impatient or bored with a movie when I see it in a theater. I tend to slump lower and lower in my seat and start muttering to myself. This started to happen to me 20 minutes in. For those who will tell me that the books are better, I will just have to take your word for it.
Wish Upon
From the director of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) comes the story of Claire (Joey King), a simple high school girl who is unpopular, wants things to be better and is still trying to cope with her mom’s suicide. One day her dad (Ryan Phillipe) is rummaging through trash (much to her embarrassment) for things to sell when he comes across a Chinese wish box and thus Claire begins to make wishes with it. Her dreams come true as she becomes rich, popular, etc. but with each wish there comes a price…a deadly price…
Don't let the advertisements fool you. There are absolutely no scares or moments of genuine suspense to be found in this movie. What you will find are laughs in abundance. I went to see this with my sister at my local theater on the last day it was to be playing there and we had the entire theater to ourselves. There were times when we were laughing so hard and talking so loud that I occasionally looked back to see if there was anyone else in the theater out of fear of annoying any possible late comers. But watching this movie alone in the theater was a blast and while I can safely say that this was not a good movie at all this one of the best times I have ever had at the movies.
I will start off by saying that this movie really has no business being released at summertime as this just feels like a January release that studios would crap out to make a quick buck. Movies like this feel like part of the January dumping ground, or as Red Letter Media calls it, “F&%# you! It’s January!” It features a ton of young actors that look like they were from the Disney Channel, somewhat famous actors in the form of Ryan Phillipe and Sherilyn Fenn, an amusing horror premise (it’s basically Final Destination crossed with the Monkey’s Paw…as well as touches of Mean Girls with some Disney Channel lameness thrown into the mix) trying to be executed earnestly but fails miserably with scares that generate more chuckles than gasps and having uniformly terrible performances from everyone involved with their characters behaving stupidly all the time. This should have been released back in January and probably would have made a good double feature with The Bye-Bye Man.
If there was one thing that truly that caught me off guard was the tonal shifts that frequently happened. You have the high school stuff, which is the stuff you see in pretty much every teen movie ever, then Claire makes a wish which is always played in a somewhat ominous fashion. After the wish is made someone dies and it really was funny when the deaths happened. They weren’t bloody or overly gruesome, but the way they were edited together and how they would abruptly end in some cases made me imagine cartoon sound effects to accompany them. Not all the victims die though. There is one girl who Claire wishes would rot and merely ends up in the hospital and shows up later with scars but even that was funny since her reaction looking in the mirror and screaming made me chuckle. But the reactions of her friends felt unnatural as one of the friends started to take pictures on their phone and then nonchalantly going around the school asking for donations.
Before and after the deaths however, you have scenes that feel out they were from the Disney Channel or some silly direct to video girls film. You have scenes where Claire is most popular girl in school, getting adoration from her peers, getting rich and even going shopping and having super-happy-dress-up-fun-time with her friends; all of which have terrible modern pop songs with them. All of the shifts in tone made me throw my hands in the air numerous times and made me wonder what movie I was watching. It’s not a good horror movie and it’s not even a good teen movie…actually I would go so far as to say this isn’t a real movie at least not one worthy of the big screen. It feels like a Sci-fi channel movie that the producers probably greased the palms of some distributor somewhere to get this widely released.
But who cares? You don’t go to movies like this for a decent plot, acting, or even scares. I sure didn’t. I heard this was either plainly awful or flat out funny and I was relieved to find I fell into the latter. I won’t go into too much more detail as to why this is one of the funniest movies of this year (unintentionally of course) as there is far too much to talk about. Seriously what I just shared with you was but a taste of the stupid that is contained in Wish Upon. If you by chance happen to see this for a cheap price to buy at Walmart or to rent at a red box, do it. Gather some friends, bring some snacks and laugh your asses off.
Between the two I would recommend Wish Upon in heart beat as that was bundles of fun and The Dark Tower was nothing special. If Wish Upon is no longer playing at your screens, then check out Dunkirk, War for the Planet of the Apes (my pick for best Summer movie), Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, even Spiderman: Homecoming. See anything besides The Dark Tower.
And The Emoji Movie
Don't see that either.
