The people have spoken: they prefer Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the
star of kiddie-skewing garbage. They want him neutered, thwarted,
wasted. They don’t want him to try.
And who is he to argue? After the failure of The Rundown, the unspeakable disaster of Southland Tales, and the $90 million success of The Game Plan,
Johnson has apparently decided to play it safe and give up on
respectability. His latest concession: signing on as the star of The Tooth Fairy, a Santa Clause-style comedy from Santa Clause 2 & 3 director Michael Lembeck. Johnson will play “an ordinary man who’s brought in to try to save the tooth fairy kingdom”. If Johnson’s an “ordinary man”, I’m Walter Hudson (and very, very gassy).
The
film is based on a screenplay by Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandell,
which makes me all nostalgic. Of course, they’ve been kinda off their
game for, oh, the last twenty years, but I’m often loyal to artists
who’ve attained greatness at least once in their careers – especially
if said greatness occurred during my childhood. And I love Ron
Howard’s something awful (“Name of the deceased: something Polish?”).
Too bad they’ve been rewritten by Joshua Sternin & Jeffrey
Ventimilia, who’ve contributed to television shows both awesome (Night ShiftThe Critic) and awful (That 70s Show).
Ironically,
Johnson probably would’ve been a huge movie star in the 1980s, when
Ganz & Mandell were two of the hottest scribes in town. Hell, with
his natural charisma, he might’ve been bigger than Stallone and
Schwarzenegger. Today, he’s Fred MacMurray on steroids.
8 comments
CHRIST!! This guy should do a remake of "Commando" and get back to what he does best. Kicking ass!!
I just don't get why this guy can't carve out a niche for himself, like Statham's doing. This pays the bills, sure, but I think he'd be perfectly successfull with his own 'Transporter' or 'Crank' series.
Wait for it:
"The Santa Clause vs. The Tooth Fairy"
(Tim Allen) (The Rock)
Coming Thanksgiving 2009!
You know it's going to happen. Then for 2010:
"Fantasy Force" w/ Tim Allen, The Rock and Vin Diesel as 'The Pacifier'!
Tagline: Fighting crime, one spoiled rotten kid with a toothache at a time!
Please, somebody, give The Rock a real role. Will Smith, Tom Cruise, Will Ferrell — help a brotha out!
THE RUNDOWN will always remain one of my all-time favorite silly action films, but this article was written with a total disregard for it being very much a straight comedy. You also lose huge points for not making any reference to Walken's DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF THE TOOTH FAIRY diatribe.
See I don't think The Rock would have been big in the 80's. While Peter Berg utilized Dwayne perfectly in The Rundown no other filmmaker has since. The man has some charisma but no edge. There is something wrong when people like Treat Williams (The shitty Substitute sequels) and Michael Jai White (Exit Wounds, Undisputed 2) do better action work then you do. 70 minute Walking Tall doesn't count no.
Why the hell didn't the Rundown do well? Stifler? No luck on DVD either? Not knowing him from the gay shit during his wrestling days, Dwayne epitomizes the action hero. Charming, confident and brutal. We need that shit back in films. No more "urban" dreck please.
Airheads must be happy!
I don't think the writing on "That 70s Show" was uniformly bad. Will Forte was a writer and he wrote "The Brothers Solomon"! Oh…right.
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