Rampage

If one is to make a big, dumb, loud, noisy destruction porn movie, the key to doing it well is to know that it should embrace its nature. Independence Day is all of those adjectives, but it revels and relishes in being as cheesy and ridiculous as possible. We can laugh at the alien mother ship being taken down by a computer virus written in 15 minutes on a MacBook, but that’s what gives the movie charm. It doesn’t wink at itself or you; it knows what it is and is earnest in being so. Rampage doesn’t. It earnestly tries to be serious while being as dumb as a sack of doorknobs. Everything it does, it does as a serious disaster movie, despite a story and characters and circumstances that could not be more moronic. This results in a tonal dissonance the movie cannot overcome. There’s only so many times one can see CGI destruction or The Rock do his The Rock schtick before one wants more, and that’s all this movie has to offer. I can’t say I’m surprised this is the result, and I’m not disappointed either. I expected dumb and that’s what I got, which is why I’m not going lower. If you just want mindless carnage, it’ll do the job, but don’t think about it for one millisecond, or the whole thing will break.