23 gloriously dumb things about the new 'Road House' movie
No. 7: The name of the road house in 'Road House' is 'The Road House.'
(Photo courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios)
Look, I’m not expecting a new “Road House” movie to be a movie of psychological depth and subtlety. But the remake starring Jake Gyllenhaal, now streaming on Prime Video, is so silly that I have to forego my traditional review structure and just list all the ways this movie is dumb.
Good dumb? Bad dumb? Caveat emptor.
The film opens with a POV shot of a big man getting punched, and the puncher isn’t Jake Gyllenhaal or MMA champion Conor McGregor, but noted face-tattooed musician Post Malone. God grant me the confidence to have Post Malone’s physique and play an MMA fighter in a movie that also has the world’s most famous MMA fighter in it.
The title “ROAD HOUSE” shows up in the glorious neon of the 1989 original.
When Post Malone does finally speak, he says the f-word 16 times in 26 seconds (I timed), putting Steve Martin and Edie McClurg from “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” on notice.
An angry guy stabs Dalton (Gyllenhaal) him in the side in the parking lot, and Jake only seems mildly peeved. He spends the next several minutes walking around with the knife waggling around in his side, until he fixes it himself with a roll of duct tape. (Duct tape: Is there nothing it can’t do?)
Jessica Williams plays a Florida Keys bar owner who hires Dalton to be a bouncer at her bar. “Hemingway drank there,” she tells him, and then adds. “Ernest Hemingway.” I’m starting to think this movie may not think its viewers are very smart.
Keeping the literary theme going, upon arriving in Glass Key, Dalton finds a bookstore owned by a hyper-verbal teenage girl and her widowed father. Unbidden, the girl launches into a monologue about a real local attraction called Fred the Tree. This is a real tree! I’m watching, and I’m learning.
The name of the road house in “Road House” is “The Road House.”
The bar in the original 1989 “Road House” is a sweaty Southern bar called the Double Deuce where you can completely imagine lots of fights breaking out. “The Road House” in this new “Road House,” on the other hand, is a lovely-looking open-air establishment on the beach, with a thatched roof and lots of natural light. When a fight breaks out, it looks like the combatants are fighting in an Epcot Center pavilion.
Before Dalton starts swinging, he calmly asks, “Do you have insurance?” “Is there a hospital nearby?” I like an action movie that’s not afraid to weigh in on the nation’s health care issues.
After he kicks five guys’ asses in the parking lot, he drives them to the hospital himself with the Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” playing on the car radio. This was the moment when I thought I might actually be enjoying this motion picture.
There’s a long back-and-forth between Carter and the owner (Jessica Williams) over why the “Road House” is two words instead of one. “It’s a joke,” answers Williams, inscrutably. This was the moment that I reconsidered whether I was enjoying this motion picture.
Dalton rents a houseboat. It’s named “The Boat.” What is happening here? Is the name of this island Eponymous Key?
The bad guys all work for villainous Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen in all his smarmy dickhead glory), who we first meet while he’s getting a straight-razor shave from an underling while on the deck of a boat rocking in stormy waves. When he gets nicked, he punches the boat captain.
For such a small-town dive bar, the Road House has excellent live music, with a different band every scene. And no matter how bad the fights get, the band never stops playing.
Late one night, a bad guy attacks Dalton in his houseboat. Dalton disarms the guy and throws him the water. He’s prepared to let the guy go – but then the guy is eaten by a random crocodile so fast that it’s hard to believe Dalton and the crocodile didn’t work that out in advance.
Ben Brandt is a real estate developer. You can tell that because he has one of those giant 3D models detailing his future development plans that evil real estate developers have in every movie.
When McGregor appears in the movie, he spends the entire first scene walking around a Mexican village completely naked, wearing a smile, a pair of boots and a necklace with his character’s name, Knox. He also has his name tattooed THREE TIMES across his tummy. His performance somehow gets less subtle from there.
A guy yells “Bar fight!” exactly the same way John Belushi yells “Food fight!” in “Animal House.”
This new “Road House” does not include any reference to the iconic “Be nice” speech that Patrick Swayze gave in the original. I’m all for blazing your own trail, but come on.
For some reason every fight scene is shot like a ‘90s pop-punk video, with the camera in really close and swirling around. I think the reason that this movie is on Prime Video rather than getting a theatrical release is that it would make everyone in the theater very queasy.
In the film’s climax, there’s a fistfight while two guys are bobbing in deep water. It looks silly and embarrassing for everyone involved.
Do they take off their shirts for the climactic fight? Buddy, do you even know what movie you’re watching.
There is a mid-credits scene where McGregor is also naked, because this is apparently what the people want.
I don’t know if “Road House” is a good movie (I mean, I’m pretty sure it isn’t) but I had fun watching it as a throwback to the sort of low stakes, get-the-job-done action movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s. It should be playing on TNT every weekend afternoon.
Why was it the reference to Ewan McGregor's tummy tattoo that finally broke me
I CANNOT WAIT TO SEE THIS