The Age of Commercialism

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

An excellent cast who may have had nothing better to do than pay the bills. There are no laugh out loud moments, It seems to centre on older men being as competitive as young men, boys will be boys. But the whole plot and comic moments are so lame it never gets above mediocre. Not terrible, but not really worth watching.

I could not believe the shockingly low score for this film with such an all star cast. Once I saw it, I realized it was in fact deserving of the 3.8 IMDb rating, and only so high, from the sympathetic votes for these A-listers when they realized what they had signed up for.So here's what I think happened. Ron Shelton's 5th grade grandson wrote and directed this nonsense but was too young to be named in the credits, so grandpa steps in and enters his name. Next, Waze (the phone GPS app that was product-mentioned) funded this 5th graders film, and paid these A-list actors their wages so people will go see this mess, then leave the theater and download their app. What else can it be? These huge actors did their worst... they hardly made an effort. The entire set was probably the after-party set up for when filming wrapped, just for the A-listers to have incentive to do some type of performance.The directing and editing was, well, that of a 5th grader.What a waste of talent on such a garbage screenplay.A sympathetic 3/10 from me, only for the all star cast that got duped into making this nonsense.

"Just Getting Started" seems like some sort of sardonic reply to a question about how the screenplay is progressing. Unfortunately, the movie has already been filmed, edited and released without the major re-write needed to convert it into a truly enjoyable cinematic experience. It lacks a protagonist, a hero. If one accepts the view that the hero is the character who undergoes the most emotional growth during the film, that role would probably be that of Rene Russo's Suzie. If one considers the protagonist to be the central character, it would be Morgan Freeman's Duke. If one argues that the hero is the character that the audience roots for and hopes to achieve his goals, it would probably be Tommy Lee Jones's Leo. It also lacks a villain. Suzie seems as if she might be a villain or antagonist, but turns out to be more of what is called a contagonist in Dramatica theory. Leo seems like an antagonist, but is more of a sidekick or co-protagonist in a buddy film and eventually evolves into a guardian. Jane Seymour plays the aptly yclept Delilah, the shrewish wife of an imprisoned gangster who dispatches an unidentified assassin to murder Duke in an opening scene, but the assassin is too inept to pose a realistic threat and hardly a match for a pair of septuagenarians. To compensate for this lack of clearly-defined central characters, the movie offers two trios of supporting characters in three sidekicks and three love interests. The movie was written and directed by Ron Shelton who, back in the nineties, wrote and directed a string of comedies I've never seen or only vaguely remember, including "Bull Durham" and "Tin Cup," and wrote a couple of films I have seen, "Bad Boys II" and "The Great White Hype." TGWH was amusing, until it simply ended with a sort of deus ex machina turn of events that ran counter to the direction the narrative seemed to pursue. JGS suffers from the same malaise. It doesn't go anywhere. There is no recognizable moral or theme, no character arcs. Anybody, like myself, who likes a traditional storyline, with a sympathetic hero who must acquire new knowledge, skills, friends, or whatever, to overcome a seemingly insurmountable challenge or obstacle, will likely be disappointed. JGS is one of the least amusing comedies I've seen in a long while. The idea of Morgan Freeman as an aging Lothario juggling the attentions of three oversexed senior citizens has potential, but falls flat in execution. A seminar on group sex for senior citizens could have been milked mercilessly, but is reduced to a one-liner. The conflict between the conflict between a roguish but likeable manager with his fingers in the till confronting a straight-laced, authoritarian efficiency expert seems like fertile grounds left fallow. The rivalry between two septuagenarians for a lady's affection might have been much funnier, if the Suzie were played by a much younger actress, perhaps in her late thirties, rather than an actress in her sixties, possibly with additional competition from a much younger suitor. Instead, they went for a politically-correct age-appropriate relationship and basically disqualified one of the suitors for unrelated reasons. Production values are adequate and the actors do as well as can be expected with the material they were provided, but the script wasn't ready for production.

Duke is the manager of a luxury Palm Springs retirement resort, Villa Capri. It's Christmas in the desert, and Duke's the big man on campus, until charming former military man Leo arrives and threatens to become the new alpha male. When regional director Suzie shows up to look into some improper finances, both men turn on the charm to assert their status as top dog. But what starts as a friendly rivalry, turns serious when men from Duke's past come back to haunt him, and kidnap Suzie in the process. Putting their rivalry aside, Duke and Leo come together to rescue Suzie, stop whoever is trying to kill them.......Twenty years ago, this would have been a more prolific film, everyone who is in it could have easily had their roles, and more than likely, it would have had more work put into the writing and ultimately been something a little more edgier than it's finished product.There's no need to waffle on about the cast, they are all brilliant in their own right, but here, they are clearly on autopilot to pick up an easy pay check, and to enjoy a well earned holiday.Jones plays every character he ever has in a comedy, you can tell this because he spends the majority of the film in a silly hat and sunglasses, Freeman plays the dude with swagger, and Russo is nothing more than a plot point to get the two male leads to have a little banter.Shelton has made some wonderful films in his career, but of late, he's gone way off track, and this has to be one of his worst efforts.It's never funny, the action is as lethargic as it's cast, and it's biggest problem is that it's too laid back for its own good, relient on the cast and the one sheet to draw in the grey pound.Ironically, it never gets started, its twenty years too late, and you know when the most exciting part of a film consists of a fat man sitting on a tub with a snake in it, there's little to save this bomb.