Monster Trucks Review

PG:  Action, Peril, Brief Scary Images, and Some Rude Humor 

Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon Movies

1 Hr and 44 Minutes

Cast:  Lucas Till, Jane Levy, Amy Ryan, Rob Lowe, Danny Glover, Barry Pepper, Holt McCallany

REVIEW: THE STREAK OF JANUARY CONTINUES.

Believe it or not, I’ve been anticipating this movie for a loooong time. Whenever you have a movie that was slated for a release date only to get pushed back for years makes me want to see it more. I don’t care what it's about sometimes. I just want to see that specific movie to go with a sarcastic smile, “SO, this is the film the studio didn’t want anybody to see so they waited 20 years to release it? WELL AREN’T WE GOING TO HAVE SOME FUN TODAY!” Movies such as Hoodwink Too,  World War Z, The Cabin in the Woods, that Bella Thorne Amityville movie that we were supposed to get a year and a half ago and we’re still waiting for today, and now after long wait, we finally have Monster Trucks. A film that was supposed to come out on the date Mission Impossible 5 was released and then got pushed back to that Christmas and then pushed back again to last March and then pushed back to this year in the beautiful month of January….

Looking for any way to get away from the life and town he was born into, Tripp Coley (Lucas Till), a high school senior, builds a monster truck from bits and pieces of scrapped cars. After an accident at a nearby oil-drilling site displaces a strange and subterranean creature with a taste and a talent for speed whom he names Creech, Tripp may have just found the key to getting out of town and a most unlikely friend.

THE GOOD: Oh great we have another E.T. formulaic film. Here we go again. Another Mac & Me or Earth to Echo. Oh, wait you’re doing at least something…slightly fun with it. Monster Trucks takes the same formula and doesn’t retread all of the same elements from E.T. Granted it does copy a majority of its formula it has its own breath of originality. Like a good 10%.

The visual effects and the design of Creech are impressive. This manatee-octopus like creature with is the heart of the movie. He doesn’t resemble the personality of any given alien creature from old family films but resembles more of the characteristics of Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon. I had to even look up if Randy Thom had any connections to this film for the sound design of Creech sound exactly like Toothless. As much as it’s manipulative, the relationship between Creech and Trip are the driving force of the film. When you have actors interacting with intimate objects, Lucas Till does a relatively good job interacting with this CG creature. Both he and Jane Levy are charismatic and have a lot of chemistry. Not really with each other but more with Creech.

For this being the first live action directed by Chris Wedge (director of Ice Age, co-founder of Blue Sky Studios, voice of Scrat) he does a very competent job. For a ridiculous premise that you can’t believe is a feature-length film, Wedges puts effort into these different action sequences. The film does have its moments of imagination and creativity. As much as I am tired of car chase sequences in recent films, this features a car chase that is both fun and exciting. Surprisingly it wasn’t the one in the climax, but one in the second act.

THE BAD: I recently learn that the concept of this film came from at the mind of a four-year-old. It’s not the first time a young child created a concept that became something. The webcomic turned TV series Axe Cop was made from the mind of a 5-year-old. And to be honest, I really like Axe Cop so I can’t really be cynical towards this. Despite all the good things I said about this film, it is nonetheless an incredibly flawed film. Monster Trucks would be the best Nickelodeon film ever made if it was released in 1997 after their release of Good Burger. But since this is 2017 there’s not another way to describe this other than another generic live action Nickelodeon movie.

At least we know why Lucas Till died in X-Men Apocalypse. It was because he was making this film. Okay that isn't true since this was filmed in 2014 a year before Apocalypse started filming. As charismatic as they are Till and Levy are terribly miscast. It’s weird because nearly every Nickelodeon film has to have a central character in high school, but in this, you could tell they did not give a crap. If you thought Andrew Garfield looked too old to be a high school when he was Peter Parker, Till looks near like a pedophile amongst the teenagers in his high school. For God's sake this guy is MacGyver now. The opening shot that introduces us to Trip is him sitting in a school bus with actual teenagers who look their age. You just have a tall Lucas Till sitting with these kids looking like a guy who's been left back for several years trying to get his GED. The first thing I thought was, “Oh. So I guess he’s a left back student. Oh wait he’s not? HAHAHAHA!” 

Over four years ago, Jane Levy starred in the ABC series Suburgatory where she was a teenager in high school. Over four years ago, Levy also starred in the 2012 NICKELODEON film Fun Size where she was A HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT and she looked like it. Four years later after starring in horror films such as Evil Dead and Don’t Breathe, you see her as a mature adult who should be cast as a college student. But seeing her cast as a high school student is beyond belief. I guess cause she’s short she can still be cast as a high school student similar Mae Whitman in The Duff, but…….COME ON NICK!  You could’ve easily broke away from your formula and cast these college looking actors in college. Not every film of yours HAVE to feature a central character in high school.

Besides the strange casting of these leads, the film surprises you with other characters that show up for oddly strange reasons. Amy Ryan is shown in the film’s beginning and gets nearly three licks of dialogue and then in the end during a crossfade with no lines of dialogue at all. You have Danny Glover in a wheelchair and that’s pretty much it. But the main waste of talent that hurt was Rob Lowe. The main antagonist of this movie is Rob Lowe. Why is Rob Lowe in this movie? Why is Rob Lowe doing a southern accent when the movie takes place in North Dakota. It may be a countryside state, but it's not a southern state. IT’S NORTH DAKOTA. You don’t get any more north than that.

When you thought any Fast and Furious movie or Cars movie was a long car commercial, this film has it beat. There are so many scenes of car dealerships in the background that I was waiting for a skip ad button to just show up in the bottom right corner. There are cars in nearly every frame in this. The film even has a weird sound design that is laughable. The opening to this begins with a huge explosion. Instead of hearing a KABOOM, you get a whimsical score that plays over the explosion. The movie opens with a whimsical explosion. That term was never created until the release of this movie. 

LAST STATEMENT: Although Monster Trucks has limited moments of imagination and excitement, this heavily flawed family film retreads a generic formula so safely that the only way it would be acceptable is for it to be put into a time machine and left in the 90s.

Rating: 2/5 | 46%

Super Scene: Stealthy Creech

Pros	Cons
Car Chase Sequences	Miscast of Till and Levy
Till and Levy's Charisma	Retreaded Generic Formula
Visual Effect of Creech	Wasted Cast Members
Chemistry Between Creech and Trip	Sound Design
Brief Originality	Characterization
	Wilhelm Scream