"The Fast and The Furious" made for good late night movie watching

I have a very good friend who is absolutely in love with these movies.  Well three out of the current four that are released.  He is stoked for the 5th one to come out and was shocked that I had not seen a single one.  I love action movies and car chases so it was a wonder to him that I hadn't seen this.  My reasons?  Well every preview that I saw made this look so incredibly lame I wouldn't touch it.  My friend said it was fun.  He also enjoyed "The Number 25" but that is a different story.  Up late this weekend with Kiley I came across it to watch instantly.  Why not?  It's 12:00 in the morning.  What could be so bad about it?  Turns out not as much as I thought.




To give a brief synopsis of the "plot", Brian (Paul Walker) is a cop who needs to go undercover to find out about a semi high jacking team who are said to drive tricked out street racing cars.  He befriends Dominic (Vin Diesel) who is on a street team.  Much driving and cheesy one liners ensue.  In fact, the plot is almost not really that necessary.  This movie is ONLY entertaining because of the over the top racing scenes and the absolutely outlandish dialogue.  Everyone involved with this seems to get the script is silly.  They give it their all delivering the cliched lines one after the other.  There are so many bad car puns I was laughing.  It may not have been intentional to make me laugh at all the points, but that's what I did.  Stellar line like "Yo Dom! Why'd you bring the busta here? Dom: Because the busta kept me out of handcuffs, he didn't just run back to the fort, the buster brought me back!" are delivered with total straight-faced acting.  I applaud Vin Diesel for this, I really do.  I could never have delivered lines like he had to with a straight face.  Not in a million years.

Yes the story isn't necessary, and yes the lines are cheesy, but when you get down to it this movie is fun.  There isn't any moment that tries to go too deep.  There isn't any time when I felt like they tried to take it too seriously.  That is good for this type of film.  It isn't a good movie, but it was entertaining.  I can't fault a movie to much for that.  Sometimes you don't need a movie to challenge you, or enlighten you, or awe you artistically.  Sometimes you just like to be entertained.  This movie did that for me.  I wasn't blown away, but I sure enjoyed myself.

I have noticed the rest of them are also on Netflix right now.  I am going to try to watch 2 and 4.  My buddy says I don't have to watch 3 because Paul Walker isn't in it.  Who knew Paul Walker would be the thing that made the difference between a good movie and a bad movie?

7 out of 10 stars