WHITE HOUSE DOWN: More Fun Than It Has A Right To Be

 Opening today at a multiplex near you:

WHITE HOUSE DOWN (Dir. Roland Emmerich, 2013)

So, yeah, it shares the same premise, and pretty much the same title as OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN from earlier this year (Olympus being the fictional code name for the White House in that movie), but Roland Emmerich’s WHITE HOUSE DOWN is bigger, dumber, and a lot more fun than that like-minded Gerald Butler action vehicle. 

They’re both stupid, but if watching OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN makes you shake your head, watching WHITE HOUSE DOWN makes you laugh out loud while you're shaking your head.

In Emmerich’s much more preferable take on the DIE HARD meets AIR FORCE ONE formula, Jamie Foxx is the President, Channing Tatum his Secret Service savior against an attack on the White House by a domestic paramilitary group. Actually, Tatum isn’t in the Secret Service; he just happens to be there applying for the job shortly before the hostile takeover occurs. 

Tatum gets turned down for the position by Maggie Gyllenhaal, as the chief Secret Service supervisor or something, so he takes his daughter (12-year old Joey King, who looks kinda like a tiny Sandra Bernhard) on a tour of the famous Pennsylvania Avenue residence.

Foxx (going from freed slave in DJANGO UNCHAINED to the Commander in Chief in six months - now there's an American success story!) is established right up front as a noble, dignified peace-seeking President of the people. 



Of course, one can’t help but think of Obama, especially when Foxx chews nicotine gum and mimics a few familiar mannerisms, but there’s no real statement being made here about our current administration, it’s just all in good fun.

Of course there’s corruption among all the President’s men with James Woods, seemingly reprising his role as H.R. Haldeman from Oliver Stone's NIXON, being the first baddie we can identify as a retiring Head of Presidential Detail who orchestrates the evil plan because he blames Foxx for the death of his son in the Middle East.

So Tatum’s tour group is taken hostage, and you know the DIE HARD drill - most of the action has Tatum, who strips down to the Bruce Willis-style wife beater tank top, and Foxx running around dodging machine gun bullets, getting into brutal fist fights, talking on walkie talkies, and making heroic wise-cracks all over the rooms, and hallways of the historical house.

There’s even a hilarious SUV chase all over the White House lawn to break up all the inside scenes. The leader of the thugs they fight, ZERO DARK THIRTY’s Jason Clarke is a particularly good bad guy, who gets angrier as the body count of baddies rises – these guys are usually related to each other or real close so there’s that revenge incentive growing.

Everybody appears to know how silly this all is, but they play every action movie cliché with a straight face, and that results in many genuine laughs, even if at times you can’t tell if something is intentionally funny or unintentionally funny. This move gleefully doesn’t care about the difference.

An incidental character, a know-it-all White House tour guide played by Nicholas Wright is responsible for some amusing moments as he’s personally offended by the thugs’ destruction of the house’s priceless artifacts. Michael Murphy has a thankless nothing role as the Vice President, who spends the movie aboard Air Force One, but Richard Jenkins has a better part as the Speaker of the House, but it’s a pretty transparent role too.

No matter, they’re just well-oiled parts of this machine of a movie that I bet movie-goers will enjoy than most of the other big ass offerings out there (WORLD WAR Z, MAN OF STEEL, and STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS, I’m looking in your direction). Emmerich has made big dumb disaster flicks before (INDEPENDENCE DAY, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, 2012), but this one has more appeal due to it tongue in cheek tone, and its confidently corny approach.

I’m tempted to call WHITE HOUSE DOWN the summer’s best brainless blockbuster wannabe, but then I haven’t seen FAST & FURIOUS 6 yet. So I’ll just say that it’s a gloriously stupid good time at the movies this summer (just in time for 4th of July celebrating), and a better DIE HARD movie than the last actual DIE HARD movie.

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New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 6/4/13

The lowest grossing and most critically panned of the long running DIE HARD series, John Moore’s A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD, comes out today in a 2-disc Blu Ray edition, packaged with DVD + Digital Copy, and on a single disc DVD. The fifth in the popular Bruce Willis action franchise is packed with Special Features including an extended cut of the movie, commentary by Director John Moore and First Assistant Director Mark Cotone, deleted scenes, plus a bevy of featurettes like “Anatomy of a Car Chase,” VFX sequences, storyboards, and something called “Maximum McClane.”



If you missed it in the theaters, as most people did, and are partial to John McClane, who calls himself “The 007 of Plainfield, New Jersey,” being able to again say “Yipee Ki-Yay motherfucker! (he couldn’t in the last one as it was PG-13), then this is the release for you.

Jonathan Levine's zombie rom com WARM BODIES hits Blu ray (+ Digital Copy and UltraViolet) and DVD today. The movie, which I dissed in my review during its theatrical run in February, has a bevy of bonus material including a Commentary with Director Jonathan Levine and Actors Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer, gag reel, deleted scenes, a bunch of featurettes, and the Screen Junkies snippet of Zombie Acting Tips with Rob Corddry.

Another fairly forgettable film from earlier this year, Seth Gordon’s IDENTITY THIEF, starring Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy, is also out today. Available in a 2-disc Blu ray set (+ Digital Copy, DVD, and UltraViolet), or 1 disc DVD, the sloppy comedy can be seen in both theatrical and unrated cuts, with several featurettes, alternate takes, and a gag reel. Read how un-amused I was by it in my review last February: “The Soon To Be Forgotten Off Season Folly Of IDENTITY THIEF” (2/8/13).

Carl Brunker’s 3D animated Canadian production, ESCAPE FROM PLANET EARTH, a family film I didn’t even notice in its theatrical release, drops today in a deluxe 3-disc Blu ray edition (+ Digital Copy, DVD, and UltraViolet) and a single disc DVD. Special Features: Commentary with Director Brunker, a few “Making Of” featurettes, Alternate Takes, Deleted Scenes, and Music Featurettes. Rob Corddry is involved in this one too, for whatever that's worth.



TV show sets releasing today on Blu ray and DVD: Falling Skies: The Complete Second Season, Breaking Bad: The Fifth Season, Pretty Little Liars: The Complete Third Season (there are three seasons of that already?!!?), and Appleseed XIII: Complete Series (Limited Edition), whatever the Hell that is.

If you’re looking for some Country music related titles, there’s the Lifetime Original Movie RING OF FIRE (DVD only), from GRACE OF MY HEART director Allison Anders, which tells the same story as the Johnny Cash/June Carter Cash biopic WALK THE LINE, but from June's point of view. Jewell steps into shoes previously worn by Resse Witherspoon, while Big Love/American Horror Story star Matt Ross takes on the Man in Black. The movie is better than it looks like - i.e. that awful DVD cover, but it's still pretty bad. Still, a full-length Biography special on Johnny Cash is included as a special feature so that alone may make it worthwhile for Cash fans.

Another Country title out today is Harry Thomason's THE LAST RIDE (2012), starring Henry Thomas, Jesse James, and The Big Bang Theory's Kaley Cuoco. Haven't seen it so I can't vouch for it, but it only having one Special Feature, a brief featurette, doesn't bode well.

In the old movies making their debut on Blu ray department there's EARTHQUAKE (1974), THE SHADOW (Alec Baldwin's version!) (1994), The MAD MAX Trilogy (the first and second have been available before on the format, but this is the first time for the third one: MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME, also available as a stand alone Blu ray), MIDWAY (1976), and Gene Saks' 1968 comedy classic THE ODD COUPLE.

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Supremely Stupid OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN Falls Short Of Even Being So Bad It's Good

Now playing at nearly every multiplex in Raleigh and the Triangle area:

OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN 

(Dir. Antoine Fuqua, 2013)

It’s DIE HARD at the White House! It’s AIR FORCE ONE on the ground! It’s INDEPENDENCE DAY meets DEEP IMPACT with the aliens and the meteor replaced with an attack by terrorists!

Yep, if you’re even a semi-regular at the multiplex, chances are you’ve experienced every single element that makes up Antoine Fuqua’s new action/disaster movie, OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN, featuring Gerald Butler as a Secret Service Agent fighting to protect the President (Aaron Eckhart) from a team of Korean terrorists led by the suave well-groomed Rick Yune.

When the film opens it feels like a subpar episode of The West Wing, with President Eckhart doting on the First Lady (Ashley Judd) and their son (Finley Jacobsen) as they depart Camp David with their trusted beloved guard Butler overseeing their transit. Then in the first of many derivative set-pieces, their motorcade gets into an accident due to a violent snowstorm, and Butler is unable to save Judd’s life.

18 months later, Butler is working a desk job at the Treasury (with a great view of the White House out his window he can look longingly at), but he tells Secret Service Head Angela Bassett that he wants back in the game.

Turns out it’s his lucky day because Washington D.C. gets hit hard by a crew of heavily armed, highly trained extremists, who by way of an aerial attack, car bombs, and soldiers disguised as citizens take over the White House (code name: Olympus), leaving its lawn and Pennsylvania Avenue strewn with dead bodies.

Butler, finds his way through gunfire and explosions to get inside the walls of the White House, while the President is 150 feet below the White House grounds in a bunker held hostage by Yune. With the President is the Vice President (Phil Austin), the Secretary of Defense (Melissa Leo), and a fellow agent of Butler’s played by Dylan McDermott. These folks names and occupations are told to us in tiny type on the screen so we’ll know they’re important.

Also given to us is the location and time, as in when Butler finds himself in the Oval Office: “Oval Office, 9:04 P.M.”

The DIE HARD formula comes into play in a scene in which our hero Butler encounters a bad guy he doesn’t know is a baddie (see John McClane’s oblivious meeting with villain Hans Gruber in the ’88 original), and we get to see the White House getting even more demolished. It was so much cooler when it was done by aliens; the explosions aren’t as vivid here. 

This movie is also another in the long line of indestructible badass movies with Butler being able to take out waves of thugs, like Liam Neeson in TAKEN, Daniel Craig’s 007, or Jason Stratham in every Jason Stratham movie so there’s no surprises or thrills in the poorly shot and lit fight scenes throughout.

OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN is supreme stupidity on an epic scale with a ridiculously awful screenplay, written by first time screenwriters Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt or at least a screenwriting computer program they used.

I did enjoy laughing at it when I wasn’t rolling my eyes, and counting the clichés, but the mundane mechanics wore on me as the thing kept on chugging along. A lot of genre exercises can’t help but appear like collections of stock elements. I had a severe case of cinematic de ja vu when seeing JACK REACHER last year, with its done-to-death formula, but there was at least some passion involved there.

Without an original bone in its body and not an ounce of oomph to make it memorable, OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN falls way short of even being so bad it’s good.

To borrow a line from one of my favorite movies, Terry Zwigoff’s GHOST WORLD: “This is so bad it's gone past good and back to bad again.”

More later...