Let me see...old retirees/former gangsters decide to reform the crew. Sounds great to me. What doesn't sound great is the way they handled this potentially hilarious premise. I can't say I hated this movie, because I did get quite a few chuckles, but no real laughs. And when you see a cast including Burt Reynolds and Richard Dreyfuss you can't help but feel cheated when it doesn't live up to the hype. First of all, the trailers are misleading. And the poster of the whole crew--Dreyfuss, Reynolds, Seymour Cassel and Dan Hedaya--in gangster suits and hats is as well. Because we hardly ever get to see them get into action, mob-wise. In the first act, we're bombarded with senior citizen stereotypes: getting to a restaurant in time for free soup, ogling young women, having weak bladders, playing Bingo, etc. In other words, it goes for pretty cheap pay-offs. The four leads look more like caricatures of senior citizens than actual senior citizens. Everything in this movie is mediocre, except the acting. Some critics felt the movie was trying too hard; I felt it was trying too little. The plot, however, is overwrought. We're stuck with one preposterous situation after another, and they all somehow interlock. In a funnier movie, I would've excused that--but in this one...the plot was a distraction. Just like how we're stuck with old people stereotypes, we're stuck with Cuban stereotypes, with a bunch of "Scarface" wannabes. That didn't work out too well either. Despite the great cast, I would not suggest renting this movie. Though it's not bad, there's so much unocovered potential that you just want to yell out your ideas to the director. The cast deserves better and we deserve better.
Review of The Crew
