This Means War
Two guys, who both happen to be spies, are simultaneously seduced by the same single woman; Antics ensue. That is the premise and hell, pretty much the entirety of this movie, not summed up but stated at full length. It is in other words a much more compressed and much, much more costly version of Chuck, just without any of the computer science jokes: combining as it does comedy, covert ops and cuddling. The most important comparison though is that it also manages to capture that show’s sense of charm; meaning that you just want to cuddle it. This Means War is then A McG movie right down to the core, for both better and worse; in this case, perhaps for the first time, the balance swings more to the former. War is an entirely expected effort that never even attempts to do anything new or exciting, but the formula that this mysteriously named man has followed in each of his few successes is executed near flawlessly here and so the resulting film is fricking fun regardless of its familiarity.
Like the majority of McG’s mostly mediocre movies this film has been product tested to perfection ( a process that the film conveniently contains a lot of): as such it aims to entrap the entire film and dinner date audience by including high-octane action for the boys and hunky guys in love for the girls. It’s obvious now why it received the otherwise rather strange ‘Valentines Day’ Tuesday release and also why it was preceded by a plethora of previews for upcoming Nicholas Sparks novel adaptations, though more on that later. The action scenes are ADD riddled, over-handled and over the top as most these days are ( I think maybe we have made it too easy to create a shoot-out or car chase because nowadays they are just thrown in, almost pre-packaged); they’re empty but still serve their purpose as support while the wit on show in the script steals the show. Yes that’s right, a movie can have guns, good looking people and a script too; they’re not mutually exclusive no matter what most multiplex movies will try to tell you these days.
