Matchbox The Movie \u2014 Official Trailer | Apple TV<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nPOSITIVES
Expecting anything stimulating from a narrative-free property based on a children’s toy feels like climbing Everest, however there are some unforeseen pleasantries with this movie that helped keep it from being among the year’s worst of engagements, beginning with the exhilarating direction from Hargrave, that effectively elicits some high-octane action sequences in droves. While the set pieces aren’t necessarily filmed or constructed in impressively unconventional ways, they are elevated by practical devastation and stunt work that feel refreshingly immersive from other streaming action properties utilizing lifeless CGI practices to bring the urgency and vulnerabilities of its characters to life, with the highest of stakes on full display in the platitude of angles that Hargrave conjures to their energized portrayal, allowing for more of the environmental elements to premeditate themselves accordingly for residing impacts, long before they materialize. Hargrave also imbeds a necessary form of self-awareness to the undertaking of the material that goes a long way towards exaggerating the ridiculous motivations of the character’s occasionally irresponsible actions, yet never in ways that are downright insulting to the audience’s intelligence, in the same vein as something like the Fast and Furious franchise. It gives the material an advantageous edge that keeps it from losing itself in the schematics of structural integrities or gravitational influences, all without feeling like a parody of itself and the low-hanging fruit of its genre. Likewise, some stunning lighting techniques might just be the awarded show-stealer of this collective production, offering a subtly sensual appeal to indoor imagery that helps to bridge the gap of quality between feature and streaming presentations. Because so much has been thoroughly documented about the artificially lifeless looks of Apple’s past projects, it’s nice to see the company learning from the documented mistakes of its commanding artistry, where even the outdoor photography here during enticing action sequences helps to obscure some of the detectability from artificial aircrafts or color correction, in framing, giving us a deeper dependable appreciation of the scope and scale from the established conflict, all the while crafting the most bang for the proverbial buck. Aside from enticing action and luminous lighting practices, the supporting cast of Sam Richardson, Teyonah Parris, and Arturo Castro really steal center stage here from their leading counterparts, helping to muster some of that much-needed magnetism between the group, that goes missing from the framed romantic dynamic between John Cena and Jessica Biel. While their comedic timing leaves much more to be desired among lukewarm material that rarely ever commits to the attempted tone of the scene, there’s a gently warm and endearing affectionateness between them that illustrates the extensive history of their irreplaceable friendships with one another, providing enough scene-stealing charming cadence between them to occasionally overlook the flaws of some of the production’s grander casting choices, all the while maintaining so much of that child-like sense of adventurism from their performances, that bounce so effortlessly off of one another with naturalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NEGATIVES<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After Barbie was a commercial and critical success in luminating a path of profoundness to the sentimentality of our childhood toys, it was only a matter of time before Mattel greenlit other plasticized properties to bring to the silver screen, and considering Matchbox has never had any semblance of structural plot or world-building to its nostalgic outpouring, it’s no surprise that this movie’s screenplay fails on nearly every explorational avenue, beginning with the heartfelt dynamic of its protagonist group of best friends, who fail to trigger the necessary emotionality that this movie leans so heavily into. Part of the reason for this dwindled opportunity is the rushing of the movie’s opening sequence, involving these characters as children before they were untimely divided, but just as much blame should be paid to their one-dimensional outlining, which the screenwriter obviously took everything that he learned from the Fast and Furious franchise and placed it directly on the shoulders of these everyday people who do extraordinary feats in the heat of battle. Because the only articulated aspect paid to each of them are their jobs, it feels fairly evident that these particular set of skills will inevitably come into the fold at any given time throughout the two hour engagement, offering them a conveniently advantageous angling to overcome an onslaught of adversaries who should alleviate them in a matter of seconds. The script also plays the tonal juxtaposition game, in which it never feels confident with how it coherently approaches the enactment of its microscopic material, where every intimate scene between its characters has the opportunistic elasticity to be interpreted as comedically vulnerable or dramatically bittersweet. This might not necessarily sound like a problem, as interactions can often be interpreted in a lot of varying ways throughout cinema, however because Hargrave’s direction is so on-the-nose and obvious, it often leaves the punchlines of the humor, or depth of the dramatics feeling detectable long before they’re unloaded, with not enough consistency in either to make the experience memorable, and considering this is replicated by some predictably obvious twists that constantly felt miles behind my advantageous insight, it saunters the storytelling at all times, where an already bloated runtime could be made relieving by trimming or amputating so many of these sequences that matter little to the movie’s bigger picture. Sometimes twists are revealed by lingering camera angles that focus on a background character with no contextual or directional relevance to the film, while other times it telegraphs working relationships so derivatively from other better genre offerings before it, and it leaves the narrative feeling so tediously overworked and convoluted by prolonging the extent of these character’s globe-trotting journey, in turn eviscerating the necessary urgency factor of a plot that slows down too frequently to feel suspenseful. On top of this, while the aforementioned action sequences are catastrophically enticing enough to allure an audience, the reality is that there isn’t enough car chases throughout the movie’s duration to make them feel like a meaningful component to the enactment of this polished property, particularly when the vehicles themselves are more often than not these underwhelming everyday vehicles that aren’t fun or ferocious enough to capitalize on the extent of rampant velocity and bodily resiliency. This obviously changes during the third act climax, where the characters are given some wicked wheels for their massive mission, however because the first two acts of the movie only contain two chase sequences, it leaves the movie relying heavily on the merits of the group’s dynamic, which isn’t always realized with the most charmingly irresistible performances throughout the majority of this decorated ensemble. While I am a massive fan of John Cena’s work as a comedic actor, his work as an action star leaves slightly more to be desired among interchangeable roles so emotionally undefined to distinguish from one another, with his phoned-in deliveries here frequently undercutting the magnitude of his charismatic charms with monotonous deliveries, especially alongside a romantic dynamic with Jessica Biel, which features no semblance of palpable chemistry between them. This coldly clammy registry does in fact prove that it takes two to tango, and because of such Biel’s first cinematic project in nearly a decade is unfortunately weighed down by a thankless role in which she has very little energetic conviction to unload towards it, in turn wasting away some of the movie’s most stirringly sentimental scenes in which her character is overcome by the loss of her father-like mentor. Finally, even corporate shilling makes its way into the advantageous opportunity for Mattel to sell toys, as everything from the script’s forcing of the brand’s history, to the framed depiction of the toys themselves options for commercialism in the most shameless ways, without anything implemented gracefully to tie into deeper meanings, emitting this slimily inescapable feeling that compromised anything artistically or emotionally that the movie was attempting for itself. I can overlook the toys themselves, as it contextualizes the group’s name, however because the dialogue frequently enlists characters to go out of their way to articulate such unnaturally imbedded tidbits to their conversations, it leaves the naturalistic integrity of the dialogue going out of its way to self-promote, without anything subversively profound to the material to balance its pandering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
OVERALL
Matchbox: The Movie is a blandly generic and by-the-numbers kind of proverbial speedbump to the cinematic commercializing of kids toys, that cleverly constructs a predictably telegraphed screenplay full of lifeless characters to a familiar intellectual property, in order to hook an audience on name alone. While the film’s appeal is temporarily torqued by energized direction and unforeseen productional components proving a little something under its hood, the flat characterization, compromising humor, and calculated pandering leave its structural wheels spinning out in place, culminating in a microscopic shell that is all plastic and no promise<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My Grade: 4.6 or D<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Directed By Sam Hargrave Starring – John Cena, Jessica Biel, Sam Richardson The Plot – When a group of former childhood friends reconnect, their nostalgic reunion takes a wild turn as they stumble upon a dangerous international plot, forcing them to band together to save the world from catastrophic destruction. Rated PG-13 for sequences of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9973,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9972"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9972"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9974,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9972\/revisions\/9974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}