REVIEW - LAST VEGAS

Although knowing that Last Vegas had no more realistic potential than to be an average, inoffensive comedy, I was amused by the trailers and so decided to give the film a shot. I had expected most of the best jokes to be familiar to me from said trailers, and the remainder of the film to be generally acceptable. I had not prepared myself for what an egregious example of filmmaking-by-numbers Last Vegas could be, an aggressively demeaning and obnoxiously mainstream insult to all who see it, and particularly to those who enjoy it. Nor had I prepared myself for the fact that all of the best jokes, not just most of them, were familiar to me from the trailers, and that all of the worst were familiar to me from my most wretched nightmares. Five actors with more Oscars than sense take it in turns to defecate on each of their cinematic legacies with characters so thin you couldn't even call this acting. Humour so hoary it outdates the cumulative age of the film's entire cast, crew and audience, and a constant surge of sexism which no-one acknowledges but which all abuse wholeheartedly. And maybe it was cheaper to just hire these actors than assemble clips from their former work and mangle a movie out of the product, but were that product any different at all (and that's questionable), it'd certainly be of infinitely higher quality. Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline are amusing in that way that Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline can be, and that's about as far as I can praise their work here. I never cared for Michael Douglas as an actor, and I've now given up on Robert De Niro and wish he'd do us all a favour and retire. Mary Steenburgen needs a stern talking to and a new agent. And I need a triple gin and lemonade and a very long lie down.