James Hay - Cinema EditorDirector Jon Turteltaub, most famous for helming the National Treasure franchise and bringing us ‘90s comedy classic Cool Runnings, delivers a real bore with his latest: trite bachelor romp Last Vegas.
Unfortunately the film is as tired and the narrative as old as the cast/characters themselves. Boringly formulaic in its plot progression and yawningly predictable and average in just about everything it does, Last Vegas is over the top in its stereotypical character portraits and lacks any real pathos as a result. Although the cast of veteran Hollywood A-Listers do their valiant best, the majority of the jokes are already unfunny before they even hit their punch lines. Add in the generic and two-dimensional love story angle and you’ve got the full house of a movie that you’ve both seen before and don’t want to see again.
The saving grace is the heavyweight cast but there is only so much they can do to keep this lemon afloat. Screen icons Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas and Morgan Freeman are charming to watch, as ever, but this is just a film that happens in front of you and is forgotten instantly. There’s nothing original here and although that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as so many of Hollywood’s successful films these days lack originality but deliver on feel-good satisfaction, unfortunately there’s none of that here as this dud isn’t even good enough at following formula to redeem itself.
The first New Year’s resolution of 2014 should be to definitely not watch Last Vegas. Disappointing considering it had all the potential to be The Hangover on Viagra, a very funny film that could have been…
