Last Vegas (12A.)
Directed by Jon Turtletaub.
Starring Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline and Mary Steenburgen. Opens January 3rd.105 mins.
Hollywood doesn’t believe in much but it does retain a touching faith in the stars; that stardom can redeem all shortcomings. The main concern is not the quality of the project but who you can attach to it. It’s a quaint and backward superstition but sometimes, just sometimes, it works. Last Vegas is a lazily conceived entertainment, made lazily entertaining by the force of it star performers.
The lazy description is a geriatric Hangover, but really this is much closer to the spirit of City Slickers, with old age replacing midlife crisis. Four lifelong friends, together since growing up in Brooklyn, head off to Vegas for a stag do for the Douglas character, a lifelong bachelor who is marrying a girl half his age. The scene where Kline’s wife packs him off with a prophylactic and a slab of Viagra is the equivalent of Billy Crystal being told to go out and find his smile. There’s plenty of cringeworthy stuff in Last Vegas but it does give the impression that we are eavesdropping on these old masters letting their hair down, and that’s probably all it needs to do to satisfy audiences.
De Niro plays the grouch of the group, and that is appropriate. He is the grumpy man who feels left out of the party and would like to spoil everybody else. While the other three have star personas that enable them to glide through the material, a little twinkle that make you smile at the weakest of jokes and De Niro doesn’t have that. It is noticeable that of the four, he’s the only one who seems aged. The others look older but what they had is still there. De Niro seems shrunken and diminished by age, and his acting seems to have retreated. His fame was built on ferociously committed performances and since he gave up his method man intensity all he has left is a series of shrugs and eyebrow movements. He has become the ventriloquist doll of his former self.
Directed by Jon Turtletaub.
Starring Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline and Mary Steenburgen. Opens January 3rd.105 mins.
Hollywood doesn’t believe in much but it does retain a touching faith in the stars; that stardom can redeem all shortcomings. The main concern is not the quality of the project but who you can attach to it. It’s a quaint and backward superstition but sometimes, just sometimes, it works. Last Vegas is a lazily conceived entertainment, made lazily entertaining by the force of it star performers.
The lazy description is a geriatric Hangover, but really this is much closer to the spirit of City Slickers, with old age replacing midlife crisis. Four lifelong friends, together since growing up in Brooklyn, head off to Vegas for a stag do for the Douglas character, a lifelong bachelor who is marrying a girl half his age. The scene where Kline’s wife packs him off with a prophylactic and a slab of Viagra is the equivalent of Billy Crystal being told to go out and find his smile. There’s plenty of cringeworthy stuff in Last Vegas but it does give the impression that we are eavesdropping on these old masters letting their hair down, and that’s probably all it needs to do to satisfy audiences.
De Niro plays the grouch of the group, and that is appropriate. He is the grumpy man who feels left out of the party and would like to spoil everybody else. While the other three have star personas that enable them to glide through the material, a little twinkle that make you smile at the weakest of jokes and De Niro doesn’t have that. It is noticeable that of the four, he’s the only one who seems aged. The others look older but what they had is still there. De Niro seems shrunken and diminished by age, and his acting seems to have retreated. His fame was built on ferociously committed performances and since he gave up his method man intensity all he has left is a series of shrugs and eyebrow movements. He has become the ventriloquist doll of his former self.
