|
Advertisement |
Overall Rating
 Awesome: 24%
Worth A Look: 26.67%
Average: 5.33%
Pretty Bad: 25.33%
Total Crap: 18.67%
3 reviews, 57 user ratings
|
|
| Maximum Overdrive |
by Brian McKay
"'This machine just called me an Asshole!'"
|
Too bad the first five minutes of this movie are the best. It's all downhill from there. From Stephen King, author of the occasionally brilliant novel, but usually master of the crap-fest, comes "Maximum Overdrive", a 90 minute movie stretched out from a 30 page short-story that wasn't one of his best to begin with. I hadn't seen it since it first came out 16 years ago, but it seemed a lot better the first time around.It starts with a comet, as most catastrophe crap-movies do. When the Earth passes through the tail of some comet that makes the skies glow like a green lava-lamp for eight days, all of the machines suddenly come alive and go on a killing spree. In the original story it was just cars and trucks, but this time everything from vending machines to electric knives want in on the action.
So, It's "Night of the Living Appliances" when several people find themselves stuck in remote truck stop, hemmed in by a line of menacing big-rigs doing a cake-walk around the gas pumps. None of the cast can act. All of them talk like stupid hicks - or like bad actors talking like stupid hicks. Emilio Estevez once again displays his lack of thespian prowess as a busboy turned hero. Laura Harrington, a fluffy piece of 80's trash, provides the love interest and is so wooden that each of her lines sounds like a two-by-four being fed into a wood chipper. Pat Hingle is the stereotypical Stetson-wearing cigar-chomping fat fuck good ol' boy asshole boss, who just happens to have a handy stash of reloadable LAWS rockets in the basement. Yes, not only are these LAWS rockets reloadable (the LAWS usually being a "use and discard" one-shot weapon), but they occasionally even reload themselves! Isn't that precious!
Most of the characters are so annoying that you want them to die. Like the trailer-trash waitress who repeatedly screams "WE made YOU" at the rebellious trucks, as AC/DC's "Who Made Who" drones in the background. Who made Who? Who Gives a Fuck! And then there's a young but still ugly Yeardly Smith as the squealing harpy newlywed. She may be cute as the voice of Lisa Simpson, but goddamn if that voice combined with her face isn't a recipe' for a railroad-spike lobotomy migraine.
To be fair, it does have its laugh-out-loud moments of camp appeal. There are also some decent scenes of trucks being blown up, including one that spills out its cargo of toilet paper rolls like a gigantic bursting Jiffy-Pop skillet. But damn, the whole premise is so ludicrous to begin with, even for a Stephen King story, that it's hard to pay it much attention anyway. I dunno, maybe it could have worked if someone like Hitchcock had done it. But then, probably not.
Drive-In Triple Feature Arduous Viewing Picks for Maximum Overdrive:
Graveyard Shift and Sleepwalkers should be all you need to complete the Stephen King movie Tri-Crapathon. I was thinking of throwing in Children of the Corn, but now that I think of it, that was better than any of these three - though not by a whole lot.Well, one thing I will give King - he is prolific, if not consistent. Watch out for the scene where Emilio walks past a truck with "Here comes another Load . . . " painted on the side. Not only is it amusing in its own right, but it's an almost Nostradamus-like prophecy of just how bad this movie was bound to turn out. Either that, or a secret message from King to the fans, who still don't realize that they've been duped more often than not.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=2337&reviewer=258
originally posted: 09/22/02 12:00:42
![[printer]](/images/icon/printer.gif) printer-friendly format
|
 |
USA
02-Nov-1986 (R)
DVD: 07-Sep-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
N/A
|
|
Articles 
subscribe to this feed![[AllPosters.com]](/images/icon/ap.gif){kind=icon}
