Director: Dax Shepard and David Palmer
Genre: Action, Comedy, Romance
Rating: C
A few weeks ago I saw the trailer for Hit and Run for the first time and found myself laughing at
it. I very promptly chastised myself for
laughing at a movie trailer that had Tom Arnold in it. But the movie looked funny and the premise
interesting, so despite the fact that it featured Tom Arnold I decided to go
see Hit and Run. My God, do I wish I hadn’t.
Hit and Run is the story
about a guy, in the Witness Protection. Charlie
Bronson (Shepard) has lived in the middle of nowhere, California (I believe)
for a number of years now because after a bank robbery, for which he was the
getaway driver, went sour he sold out his friends. His life is good, until he finds out that his
girlfriend of a year, Annie (Bell) has the opportunity for an amazing job in
LA. Despite the fact that his former
friends all live in LA Charlie decides that it’s totally smart for him to go to
LA – without the aid of his assigned US Marshal, Randy (Arnold). It all goes to shit, however, when Annie’s
ex, Gil (Michael Rosenbaum) figures out Charlie’s real name and contacts Alex
Dimitri (Cooper), the guy Charlie sold out.
I’ve been on a bit of a ‘start with the good stuff’ kick lately, so let’s
break it. The problem with Hit and Run is that it really isn’t
funny. There are funny moments, and I
absolutely loved a lot of the scenes between Shepard and Bell, but for the most
part it’s really just kind of lame. Tom
Arnold stopped being funny about the time he divorced Roseanne Barr, and I
would even go so far as to question if he was funny before then. I’m really hit or miss with Bradley Cooper -
sometimes he’s funny, sometimes he pushes the joke too far – but I think when
paired with Dax Shepard, who can be of a similar nature, disasterous results
ensue. Oddly enough, though, the real
disappointment of the movie was Kristen Bell herself. While I love Bell’s work in previous films, I
found myself really bothered by her appearance in Hit and Run. The entire time
it was just a case of “why are you in this movie?” – with the answer being “because
you’re sleeping with the director.” It’s
a joke that’s often made of bad performances, and while Kristen Bell’s
performance was far from bad, the knowledge that she’s engaged to the director
makes me think that the only reason she sunk so low as to do this movie was
because she’s engaged to the director.
That or because Dax Shepard gave her a sloth.
In the good, though, there is the chemistry between Shepard and
Bell. Their off screen relationship
transitioned really nicely onto the screen, with my favourite moments of this
movie being the tenderness between the two of them. The film’s opening scene was really beautiful
and I liked the way that they kind of bookended it at the ending. In many ways I kind of felt that the two of
them were playing charicatures of themselves and the relationship that they had
was based on their real life relationship.
A lot of the little things that happen between the two are things that
you’ll see in reality but not in movies, which was nice. The movie made me feel like the way that
Charlie and Annie were must be a reflection of the way that Dax and Kristen are
– while I acknowledge that there’s no real basis for such an opinion, they are
acting, I do think it’s a sign of good acting, no matter how bad the movie
itself turned out.
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