An excerpt from my script review for Road House which will be available 03/25/24:
2.) Plot Stability
Okay, before we get into the original, did anyone watch the remake?
Don’t let me ruin it for you if you didn’t…
…
…
…it was pretty bad.
The fight scenes were fine, but the biggest issue?
Conor McGregor.
There may be some MMA fans out there that thought he was awesome, but he had me asking, “What the actual fuck?” on his acting choices.
One of the reviews I read said it better:
“Conor McGregor basically ruins this with his performance as he’s in a completely different movie most of the time he’s onscreen.”
And that was another big issue, this remake had a hard time trying to figure out what it was.
We start out similar to the original, Dalton going to help clean up the clientele at a bar, but then we go off on some “crime thriller” style tangent trying to figure out the motivation of why the bad guy wants The Roadhouse.
Isn’t enough that he just wants to own and renovate the entire island into a resort? Why did we need to spend time having Dalton figure that out and “follow the money”?
Is Gyllenhaal trying to make up for not being picked by Nolan as Batman?
This is why the original still works so well…it’s simple.
Brad Wesley is a stronger villain than Ben Brandt because he just wants to be a mob boss, and protection money.
Everyone can keep going about their business, but Wesley’s taking a cut.
Same with McGregor’s Knox versus the original’s Jimmy (also called Reno in the script).
Jimmy has very few lines and that makes him all the more menacing.
It’s almost like the remake wanted to be completely different than the original and we got something that was so fucking wacky it didn’t make sense.
Don’t believe me? Rewatch Knox’s intro.
He jumps out a window, presumably having banged someone’s wife or girlfriend, walks down the street naked, only to burn down an outdoor market to steal a coat that barely covers his genitals?
If he’s such a badass, wouldn’t he have just beat the shit out of the husband/boyfriend, and then finished what he was doing?
Instead we’re given this intro that’s trying too hard to tell us Knox is a crazy mother fucker.
And it continues to fall apart from there, most of the time it doesn’t help you can’t understand what he’s saying.
I don’t know…
This is supposed to be about the plot to the script, which plays out mainly like the film, but it was so disappointing watching the remake.
Makes perfect sense why it went straight to Amazon Prime and not the theaters.
And one of the people I blame most?
Howard Stern.
Listen, I get that you can’t trash a guest who comes on your show, but he used to be (at least I romantically remember him being) a bit more honest with his reviews and criticism.
This one he gave a glowing review of, praising Conor McGregor as, if not the next Dwayne Johnson, then at least a new John Cena.
There’s one thing I wish McGregor’s performance shared with Mr. Cena…that I couldn’t see it.
Want EARLY access to our videos, uploads, and movie/script reviews? Members get them FIRST! Follow this link to our Discussion Forum.
