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The Fast and Furious 6 Short Review (Spoilers)

Well the weather hasn’t been great here in New Jersey so I stayed away from the shore this Memorial Day Weekend and spent Monday night at the movies with my friends. They talked me into seeing Fast and Furious 6; here is my short review.

What I liked:

There are two simple things that appeal to a teenage guy like me, fast cars and hot girls. This movie has them both so that part of me was satisfied.
This movie is a direct sequel to F&F 5 so there isn’t this hour of character introductions and back stories.

What I disliked:

It’s a direct sequel…so if you are just now jumping into the Fast and Furious series, well you’ll be totally lost and confused.
This movie is no Tokyo Drift. Tokyo Drift is the ultimate movie in this entire movie series; it encompasses everything Fast and Furious should be about: fast exotic cars, hot girls, and awesome street races
What in the world was I watching? Fast and Furious 6 seemed to have more love stories than Twilight, more explosions than Transformers, more cheesy one liners than any comedy movie, more car crashes than The Blues Brothers, and more gun fights than an old western.
Hey…uh where were the car races? There was one legitimate street race that lasted three or four minutes.
The plot gets even more unrealistic to the point it just doesn’t even make sense. (Spoiler Alert) You mean to tell me a car crew of internationally wanted cons aren’t able to be tracked down while hiding in the near open and hired by a crime fighting unit to take down a rival crew led by an ex SAS operative? Sure…
There’s going to be another next July. I can tell you already that Fast and Furious 6 was made to lead directly into the next one that’s already been confirmed. Now I understand the need to bring the story full circle but the plot is going to be the same just with a new “bad guy” in it who is another big name (ahem Jason Statham). I just hope they bring Fast and Furious back to it’s roots because this series is becoming as played out as Saw and Final Destination.

My final impressions? Well if you have that much free time, a little kid who wants to see it, or friends who will buy you your ticket then by all means go see Fast and Furious 6. Otherwise save yourself the $13 for a ticket and go buy lunch or dinner.

My Short Review of The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby by R. Scott Fitzgerald was a required book to have read in my high school sophomore year; I enjoyed the book so much I read it three times start to finish that year. Think of my excitement when I heard they were making The Great Gatsby movie. Luckily, I was able to go see the movie last night with a group of friends. I walked in expecting to be amazed and love it. I didn’t.

With Leonardo Dicaprio as Jay Gatsby I expected an amazing performance

As the title states, this is a short review, thus I shall touch on my main “likes” and “dislikes”.

What I Liked:

Dicaprio as Jay Gatsby, he fits the character perfectly and plays this mysterious, nervous, but luxurious man very well.
The sense of how grand some scenes were such as Gatsby’s infamous parties as you could just see that every walk of New York City life came to them
The historical accuracy of the movie down to every small detail

What I Disliked:

The soundtrack was quite possibly the worst part of this movie. The parties had a band playing, but you never would hear them since their music was covered by Jay Z or Kanye. I’d prefer hearing 1920’s swing music in a movie based in that time period over Kanye West.
Some scenes were poorly designed as you could easily tell it was some cheap green screen or made entirely on a computer
The constant narrating by Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) and odd scenes were it his words being written on screen.
A lack of details compared to the book, granted this a movie.
The surrounding cast. I never felt drawn to them as they were just simple characters thrown into the movie to accompany Gatsby and very few were given any explanation as to who they were.
The movie as a whole just felt poorly made and had a “cheap” vibe surrounding it.

Overall, I left the theater very disappointed. I’ve always heard that books were always better than the movies based on them and never did I believe the people who told me that. This one time though, the book has the movie beat by light years.