The best thing, worst thing, and main thing about the presidential peril movie “White House Down” in about the time it takes to watch the trailer.
TEXT OF REVIEW:
And now for my review of White House Fallen, I mean Olympus is Down, I mean Olympus House Down? Whatever the one that came out this weekend is called. Can someone get me a poster please?!
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White House Down is the second of two movies this summer about what would happen if someone decided to try and take over the White House by force. This time Jamie Foxx steps in as the president and Channing Tatum is our reluctant hero protecting the Commander in Chief. It’s really incredible how similar the plots are of Olympus has Fallen and White House Down, but the similarities end there. It’s kind of like looking at two paintings of a unicorn. One by a Talented up and coming artist and the other by a 3rd grader. Sure they’re both unicorns, but the approaches are results vary greatly. If Olympus Has Fallen was the graphic, grounded “realistic” version of what an attack might look like, White House Down is the throw back one liner 90s style Roland Emmerich version. Not that that is all bad…. just that it feels like a movie out of its time, and it makes it hard to buy into. More on that in a bit but first lets chat best thing…
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Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx are great together. They play off each other well and they are having a ton of fun in this movie. Channing again proves he is gold on screen and manages to somehow make the cheesiest of one liners feel natural and unforced. Foxx isn’t as successful at pulling off the dialogue but still bounces off of Tatum in a way that can be really fun to watch…. that is if you want to have fun watching our country under a terrorist attack. And this is really where the movie lost me… It’s just not a subject I wanted to take lightly.
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Now maybe it’s that I didn’t go in with the right mindset, maybe seeing this plot done in a violent, take no prisoners way earlier this summer, made this one feel lightweight and unrealistic, but whatever the case I found myself rolling my eyes through most of this film. Now if you like one liners, this may just be your favorite movie of all time. Cause everyone’s throwing them out. From the President, to the bad guys, to the 11 year old daughter, to the random helicopter pilot, everyone’s got something oh so clever to say in every situation. For me that was the worst thing about White House Down, the layers of cheese. But this is what director Roland Emmerich does and he has forever and he’s apparently not changing. And maybe thats ok, I forgave it when it was Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day, why can’t I over look it here? This is a movie that requires a shift to a lower frequency of brain function and I just couldn’t turn that knob this time.
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So where does that leave us overall? Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx are a lot of fun together in a movie that unfortunately I could never fully buy into. Maybe if I see it down the road on DVD I can just enjoy it for what it is, but for now it’s stretching to give it a C-.
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