Ambulance

Finally a quality TV! I mean, this is Michael Bay? It has to be great? Right? Right?

But… we’re five minutes in, and there still hasn’t been any explosions? There’s just been *eww* “character development”.

Is this even Michael Bay? And why has he named his film after the classic Larry Cohen movie starring Julia Roberts’ brother?

Hey! It’s Maggie Gyllenhaal’s brother!

Man, this is tedious. WHERE EXPLOSION

We’re 20 minutes in, but I think something is finally gonna happen… Bay has meticulously introduced a whole bunch of characters (they’re an exquisite collection of all the clichés you need for an action movie), and perhaps soon…?

Gotta have a gigantic dog.

Finally. Half an hour in, we get some action scenes.

Michael Bay has mellowed out.

It’s frustrating. There’s occasional scenes that are a lot of fun and I’m thinking YES FINALLY IT”S GOT A MOJO GOING, and then it’s followed by three scenes without any nerve whatsoever.

I’m still hopeful that Bay will manage to get something going…

See? It’s a helicopter chasing an ambulance. This should be fun! But instead it’s just kinda meh.

But it does look quite cool. Bay relies a lot on shakycam, but it’s less annoying that it could be.

It’s like there’s a fun 90 minute action movie hiding in here: Drop 45 minutes of character development and scenes that don’t quite work, and you’re there.

Well, OK. Fine.

They’re really going for zany, but arrive at cringe instead. And I like stupid movies; I don’t mind that the plot is really silly — I think that’s a plus. But like this scene, where they break into a schmaltzy song because Maggie’s brother needs to calm down — that could have been really funny — but they didn’t really commit, and that made it *rolls eyes* instead.

Large parts of this movie are so tedious that ⚀ would be a reasonable score. But there were a few scenes that had nerve, and a couple of fun characters, and a three hankie ending, so:

Ambulance. Michael Bay. 2022. ⚁