Will Twisters blow you away?

Okay, that might be a bit of an overstatement. But it’s a headline that’s baked into the Twisters cake and I’m oblidged to shoe-horn it into my review. Let it not be said that The Average Dude doesn’t take a gimme when it’s offered.

Suspension of disbelief

Twisters is not a sequel, as you might expect. There are no cameos from the original and only one brief throwback (in the form of DOT, the barrel o’ sensors). So by and large, what Twisters does is introduce a new cast of characters that rush headlong into the vorex of a second ‘once in a lifetime’ storm outbreak.

Sharknado, anyone?

And lets be honest here…anyone breezing into the theater to see Twisters is already suspending disbelief to it’s justifiable limits. If you watched Twister (1996) then you already have come to grips with that. It’s fine. We’re fine. Hollywood has asked us to suspend them further than this. They gave us Sharknado, right? Multiple times. Like 6 times. We’ll be fine.

So we’re already mentally invested in the spectacle of Twisters. Extreme weather is the star of this blow-show. But we still need a human element to become invested, to make this movie a true blockbuster.

Enter Kate (played fairly vanilla by Daisy Edgar-Jones), a plucky storm-chaser in her careless youth turned meek and tortured city-dweller because of those darned tornadoes. When she is contacted by another tortured survivor of her early days, Kate leaves the security of NYC and its zero-tolerance for tornadoes (almost) to return to where it all began…Tornado Alley.

Suspension of disbelief 2.0

Upon returning to her old stomping grounds to battle the second once-in-a-lifetime storm outbreak, Kate runs into Tyler Owens, a YouTube storm-chasing superstar who makes his living driving his Dodge Ram truck into the heart of the maelstrom and anchoring it to the earth with twin augers. Never mind that an average tornado can shred steel or wrap it around a tree like it was a welcome home ribbon. But we’re still fine here. It’s not a flying apex predator, after all.

Tyler Owens (played by the insanely charismatic Glen Powell) is the real human show-stopper here. That dude is magnetic in a way that you just don’t see much of anymore. I’m told by the greatest generation that Cary Grant had it. Ryan Reynolds almost has it. But Glen Powell? It’s just not fair. Seriously, Glen. Save some for the rest of us.

To make the obvious comparison

Twisters takes the same dirt road that Twister did, pitting high-tech storm-chasers against the home-grown thrill-seekers (Tyler is dubbed ‘the Tornado Wrangler’). Kate seems to be channeling both Bill Paxton (RIP, my dude) and Helen Hunt from the original, and not quite getting the job done. Amazing supporting cast members like Philip Seymore Hoffman (RIP, my dude), Alan Ruck (‘the Rabbit is good, the Rabbit is wise!’) and Jami Gertz (‘We got cows!’) are nowhere to be found in Twisters. No, the weight of rizz is carried alone by Powell. And he does so. Nearly effortlessly. I think that’s just part of the gift he has.

Twisters doesn’t blow

Okay, there was another ovious headline. Sue me.

It’s definitely worth noting that Twisters does not bow to the alarmists of the world and blame everything on climate change. At least, not overtly. I counted twice that the movie stated storms are happening more frequently every year (there are some statistics to support that, though not this year). I find that refreshing and a bit surprising. Bravo to Director Lee Isaac Chung for make the conscious decision to not go that route and just let us have some fun. The Average Dude Abides.

And I may have been a tad long-winded but The Average Dude is giving Twisters a solid 4.2, totally worth your two hours and corn. My theater was packed, and that’s a good sign. Blockbusters are still a thing. I imagine Twisters will have a decent box next week, if only for the folks that tried to get Deadpool and Wolverine tickets but they were sold out. Two blockbusters in a row. Maybe cinema isn’t dead yet.

In the end, going to see Twisters is satisfying in the way that any of the latest crop of Godzilla v Kong movies (minus Minus One) is satisfying. We willingly throw science right out the Dodge Ram window and feel the winds. You know what this is going in. Anything more than that is just bonus. And we’re fine with that.

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A Quiet Place Day One is a lot of questions and no answers

Okay, I’m just going to come out and say it…I wasn’t really all that psyched to see A Quite Place Day One. I liked the first two well enough. I took my daughter and her friend to see the first one and she kept burying her face in my shoulder. That’s a treasured memory.

But the previews for this prequel (I’m pretty much over the whole prequel fad…is it just me?) left me cold. It was clear that this wasn’t going to be a story telling about who the soundcritters are. Or why they wanted to come here and ‘get all rowdy’ (to channel Capt. Steven Hiller from Independence Day). That would have been a prequel premise to shout about. Heck, I would have settled for knowing how they got here with no ocular orifices. How does their tech work with them basically being a giant ‘super-ear’? We have questions.

Just like Furiosa?

You know what question we didn’t have? How did the Quiet Invasion affect anybody else except Emily Blunt, John Krasinski and their family? We invested ourselves in their struggle for two movies. Starting all over again with A Quiet Place Day One feels like a money grab, not a continuation. And if anyone anywhere was asking for a prequel, I’m positive it was to anwer the aforementioned questions.

What we got instead was the story of a young, angry female of color with cancer and nobody to care about her except maybe one person at the inpatient cancer center where she lived. One might say that, if you can’t find something in that last sentence to become emotionally invested in then fellow dudes and dudies, you just aren’t trying. Yet there I was. Not caring all that much.

I always considered myself a dog person, but now…

Sam (no last name necessary) is played by Lupita Nyong’o (most notibly of Black Panther 1&2 and Us*) is accompanied by her emotional support cat ‘Frodo’. And for most of this movie, the only emotional investment I had was over the fate of this almost supernaturally incredible cat. I’m not kidding, this was the smartest, most loyal, chill-in-the-face-of-anarchy feline ever in all the history of history. Never to be equalled and barely to be believed. Not that Frodo did anything pivotal or John Wick-like. You’ll just have to see what I mean.

One does not simply walk into NYC

Anywhoo, Sam and Frodo (oh wow…I just this moment got that!) survive the arrival of the soundcritters, crashing en masse into New York City. Why would the soundcritters with their hyper-sensitive earfaces head to the epicenter of noise in this country? Questions. And in the chaos, this angry loner does the only logical thing and adopts a scared, besuited young professional named Eric (no last name necessary). Because societal collapse is well known for bringing out the charity in angry loners.

Questions, questions and more questions

Together, they embark upon the perilous journey to make it to a shipyard where survivors are getting out of Dodge by loading up on a large boat. Because soundcritters, with their galaxy-spanning spacecraft can’t swim and can’t figure out how to get to a floating thingy. But they attack a planet that is 3/4 of a thing that they can’t figure out. Questions.

A Quiet Place Day One just has so. many. questions. Where are all the bodies? Where is the gore? How did the loudest city in the world get silent so quickly? More questions.

Djimon Hounsou…for literally no reason I can fathom

I was glad to see Djimon Hounsou in this cast. I love him in every single one of his roles.** ‘Give us, Us Free’ is one of the most powerful lines of all time. A talent for the generations. So I was disappointed to find out that his part in A Quiet Place Day One was so small and impactless that any minimum wage talent could have done it. I would rather have seen him play the part of Eric, to be honest. The casting choice doesn’t make a lot of sense, is all I’m saying.

Pray I don’t alter it any further

The Average Dude started out giving this movie a 3 out of 5 because, in spite of taking half of it to become emotionally invested in anything that didn’t have whiskers and softpaws, I eventually liked Sam and Eric. I wished them well. I begrudgingly believed in their kindness towards each other. Because the Average Dude is an optimist at heart. When goodness triumphs under the most extreme of circumstances, I cheer. I want to believe that happens.

But as I type, I’ve found more unanswered questions in both the story and the choices behind the story. So against my usual habit of grading with my first gut reaction, I’ve dropped the score for A Quiet Place Day One a couple of times. The result is a modest 2.8 out of 5. The Average Dude can neither recommend nor NOT recommend it. I can only tell you that I am glad I saw it, and only because my personal makeup is geared towards that kind of ending. So sue me. I’m an optimist and I won’t be quiet about it.

*I saw Us at a free screening and I still feel like I spent too much. It used to be my least favorite movie all time, until Drive Away Dolls unseated it.
**except for maybe Shazam!

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