White House Dumb

Welcome to another episode of Lights....Camera....Popcorn!

Today's review is White House Dumb.

Directed by Roland Emmerich.

Written by James Vanderbilt.

Review #221

MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for prolonged sequences of action and violence including intense gunfire and explosions, some language and a brief sexual image.

Run Time: 131 min

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Cast

Channing Tatum...Cale

Jamie Foxx...President Sawyer

Maggie Gyllenhaal...Finnerty

Jason Clarke...Stenz

Richard Jenkins...Raphelson

Joey King...Emily

James Woods...Walker

Nicolas Wright...Donnie the Guide

Jimmi Simpson...Tyler

Michael Murphy...Vice President Hammond

Rachelle Lefevre...Melanie

Lance Reddick...General Caulfield

Before I begin. You are not misreading the title of this film. I titled this review on purpose for the simple reason that this was one of the DUMBEST action films I have seen in a long time. Of course I wasn't surprised because Roland Emmerich has directed the following films.

Independence Day
Godzilla (thank you for ruining my favorite movie monster by the way)
The Day After Tomorrow
2012

What do all of these films have in common? They all made pretty good money. In fact Independence Day was a smash hit. And they ALL were STUPID movies. Stupid in every way. Story, characters, cast and their performances. Emmerich is a poor man's Michael Bay in the sense that he doesn't know how to properly direct or present action but is just as incompetent as Bay is in every other aspect of film making.

White House Dumb is his latest and by far greatest example of how bad a movie can be when it's littered with of dumb subplots and even dumber characters to carry out said subplots.

Plot

While on a tour of the White House with his young daughter, a Capitol policeman springs into action to save his child and protect the president from a heavily armed group of paramilitary invaders. 

Good grief did this movie SUCK! So let's get into why.

1) The kid in this movie is an annoying brat.

Now I know what you're going to say because my cousin mentioned this to me. I'm a kid hater. I realize that's how I come off because in recent reviews and some past ones as well I have spit a lot of venom towards kids in films. To set the record straight once and for all. I DO NOT hate kids in movies. What I hate is their characters and how they are portrayed via their performances. it seems in films like White House Dumb the hero has a kid who's only job is to be pissed at him the whole film. This kid gives Cale nothing but snot nose attitude until the very end. What's worse is that Cale let's her disrespect him. This makes you root against saving her life when she becomes one of the hostages. You have to give these characters a redeeming quality. Just being related to the hero is not enough.

Then to add to the stupidity. This girl is a politics freak and has a You Tube channel devoted to government and policy. While hiding from the terrorists, she's able to record video of them and upload it to her site which then gets picked up by the media which in effect exposes the identity of the bad guys.

PLEASE!!!!! The video upload is a nice segue to my next example of this film's lack if cinema I.Q.

Throughout this film we are given bits of information through exposition via the media broadcast of the White House takeover. This is common but if you pay close attention to what's being said during these broadcasts, the press are making astounding assumptions about the situation at hand. Not a major stretch considering we are talking about the media which is of course their specialty. The problem is that their assumptions are 100% accurate with what's going on. How in the world is that possible? These people are no where near the White House and no one from the press has any inside information. Yet they are reporting information that they couldn't possibly know. This is one of the MANY flaws this joke of a script has. Let's move on to quite possibly the dumbest character in this film.

The White House tour guide. He's the dummy on the left.

This guy is there for comic relief only and that's it. OK. Expect a film like this SHOULDN'T HAVE COMIC RELIEF! At least not from someone as insignificant as this guy. Here's an example of how insanely stupid this man was in the film. The terrorists have taken control of the place and have sequestered everyone in the same room. One of the bad guys sits down and puts his feet up on a table. This prompts the guide to warn him to not treat the furniture with such disrespect. So the bad guy smashes the vase that was right next to his foot on the table. The guide gets mad and points out the priceless value of the vase he just broke. In any other film this guy's bravado would have been met with a bullet to the brain. Instead he's allowed to keep breathing.

Shoot me instead!

My final one before I end this review is the best one of all. With great regret, the president orders an air strike on The White House. This is to avoid a much larger catastrophe. Very similar to The Rock when the Air Force is ordered to bomb Alcatraz to save San Francisco. The planes are just about to fire when out of nowhere the kid runs out to the lawn and starts waving a flag. Presumably to call off the attack. The pilots don't know this. Their orders are to bomb The White House until a crisis of conscience hits the Air Force commander and he arbitrarily aborts the mission without any authorization from his commander in chief.

WHAT!

If the leader of the free world tells you to shoot a puppy. YOU SHOOT THE PUPPY! Nobody told this guy to abort the attack but because he said "I change my mind" the destruction of The White House was averted. If I didn't write this blog I would have walked out of this movie LONG before this scene. Since this was the end I figured they would just wrap it up and we'd all be done with this crap.

NOPE!

They decided to give us the final sub plot that unraveled the mystery man behind the takeover of The White House. At this point I didn't care but I played along and let them explain it to me. This 2 minute scene was so complicated that it would have taken three films to rummage through all of the garbage spat at us.

That's it. I'm done!

On the 5 star scale. White House Dumb gets the goose egg. 0 stars with a "For The Love of God Stay Home!" recommendation.

That's a wrap for today.

Until Next Episode...."I'll Save You A Seat!"

"D"