Rush Hour 3.

Rush Hour 3 is, of course, the "third go-round in director Brett Ratner's cross-cultural action-comedy franchise, a sluggish repeat of its predecessors that remains mistakenly convinced that miscommunication between [Chris] Tucker and co-star Jackie Chan is the height of hilarity," as Nick Schager puts it for Slant. "Ratner's glossy direction doesn't add much energy or style to the vacuous plot and tame action, while Roman Polanski and Max von Sydow, in supporting parts, sully their good names - especially the former, who in one of many gay-panic moments gleefully administers a rectal exam to the ultra-hetero heroes."

"Chan is still the Gene Kelly of martial arts," offers Chuck Wilson in the Voice.

Updated through 8/11.

In the Los Angeles Times, John Horn profiles Ratner, but it's this piece that's a lot more fun: "The bloggers, it seems really, really hate him," notes Deborah Netburn. "And while they gleefully admit to hating lots of people, their most searing venom tends to be reserved for Ratner." Why? She asks around.

Earlier: Scott Foundas's LA Weekly cover story on Ratner.

Update, 8/9: "The movie really boils down to assassination attempt, car chase, another assassination attempt, car bombing, knife fight, Paris taxi chase, nightclub shootout, another Paris taxi chase, fight on the Eiffel Tower, and so on, and so forth, and so what," writes Alonso Duralde. That said: "While it's easy to pooh-pooh as soulless and well-oiled a machine as Rush Hour 3, this isn't a movie that can be completely dismissed. Director Brett Ratner may represent everything that's wrong with movies today, but he does bring a certain junky pop exhilaration to the proceedings, making things whip by so breezily that it's easy to ignore the gaping plot holes, the easily predictable twists, and the necessary suspensions of disbelief that are gargantuan even by action-movie standards."

Updates, 8/10: "Rush Hour 3, the junky, clunky, grimly unfunny follow-up to the marginally better Rush Hour 2 and the significantly finer Rush Hour, isn't the worst movie of the summer," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "But it's an enervating bummer nonetheless, largely because it shows so little respect for its two likable stars and its audience."

"Rush Hour 3 is crass, stupid and crudely made," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek. "It's also, in places, weirdly brilliant, a picture that plays to the largest possible audience with mechanical efficiency but also, here and there, betrays glimmers of self-deprecating cleverness, as if it were striving, perhaps even unconsciously, to transcend its own dumbness."

"It's been pointed out that the outtakes that traditionally accompany the closing credits on Jackie Chan movies are sometimes more enjoyable than the movies themselves," writes Kevin Crust in the Los Angeles Times. "If there's a Rush Hour 4, somebody might want to consider swapping the time allotted to plot with the time devoted to the gag reel. A two-minute movie followed by 89 minutes of outtakes doesn't sound like such a bad deal."

Update, 8/11: Online viewing tip. Joe Leydon on what you might or might not like about Rush Hour 3.

Posted by dwhudson at August 8, 2007 7:40 AM