28% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 152 reviews)
Runtime: 116 minutes
Directed by: Ben Wheatley… although you might not be able to tell
Starring: Statham, some other returning faces, along with new ones like Wu Jing and Sienna Guillory
From: Warner Bros. and some Chinese companies
Today I'll catch up here... this is the first of two reviews to be posted through the night:
I get why many didn’t like this, yet… I saw The Meg theatrically in ’18, but never again. That was fine, although part of the entertainment was that I sat by a random family which included a dad that acted like this was an MCU entry for him, a young son that went “yay!” softly a few times, and a young daughter who got scared a few times but it was never distracting. I wish I had that family this time in the crowd, but alas… another factor was that after I posted that review 5 years ago, Mom ended up becoming a big fan… of The Meg, not my review of it. She saw it at home more than once before she became sick then passed away. It’s a shame that happened; probably, she would have been over the moon (or rather, the sea) for it.
Statham and some others from the first return in an adventure that includes a Meg in captivity (!), three Megalodons on the rampage, secret mining operations and swerves that were telegraphed from a mile away. Truth be told, the movie has some issues; besides some obvious moments, the humor could be sigh-inducing, some moments were old-hat decades ago & this is just a dumb blockbuster. That said, it wasn’t a movie I hated—in fact, there was enjoyment to be had.
Perhaps it was because I saw a 3D showing and a few gags were explicitly for that format, but I had fun with this nonsense, including the goofy OOT setpieces, guys getting wrecked/killed, the presence of other creatures, villains getting their comeuppance… it was just enough to be acceptable. The fact that Chinese star Wu Jing was fine in his Hollywood blockbuster debut was another asset.
There was an abandoned plot thread or two and didn’t really seem like a Ben Wheatley picture—that will be irrelevant for some when there’s all that silly action in the third act. In other words, if you liked the first one for whatever reasons, there’s a chance you’ll feel the same way about The Trench.
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