Monster Trucks (2016)
(On TV, June 2019) In Hollywood, not every plan goes as expected, and so it is that Monster Trucks was initially conceived as a family blockbuster film with franchise potential—complete with familiar-but-not-superstar actors, a generous special effects budget, and expansive location shooting. Much of the excitement about the property seemed to come from its straightforward premise: Monster trucks, or rather (if you insist on more details), monsters in trucks. You can hear the Hollywood executive thinking from here: there’s nothing that boys like better than monsters and trucks, so a film combining the two couldn’t be anything but a box-office success. Alas, things didn’t go as planned: Paramount knew something wasn’t quite right as animation veteran director Chris Wedge’s film advanced through production, because the release date of the film gradually went from May 2015 to January 2017. Things got worse after release: Budgeted at $125M, Monster Trucks eked out a worldwide gross of $64M as everyone finally saw what Paramount realized early on: it just wasn’t very good. Reviews were terrible and the film sank from franchise launcher to family cable-TV filler—you’ll be lucky today to find anyone who has seen it. Alternately, it has become an entrant in a very special club—the big-budget bombs club, where viewers can feast on high production values in service of … not much. Like a superpowered engine installed in a jalopy (to use the film’s plot points against itself), Monster Trucks has great production values in the service of a middle-of-the-road story undermined by dumb moments. It may be a movie made for younger audiences, but that’s no excuse for the handful of overdone moments that make older audiences cringe—the film would be significantly better if it had excised those. Still, it’s easy to be overly critical of those big-budget bombs when their sheer scale ensures that there’s something interesting to watch at some point. Those moments usually coincide with special effects: There is a chase sequence midway through the film that holds up decently well; a garage sequence that will appeal to any inner twelve-year-old boy; and an extended climactic chase that gets the job done. The creature design finds a tricky balance between cute and disgusting. Familiar faces such as Barry Pepper, Rob Lowe, Danny Glover and especially Thomas Lennon turn in serviceable performances to support headliner Lucas Till. There is something halfway intriguing in reusing small-town fracking country as the basis for much of the premise, and to its credit Monster Trucks does end with a conclusion rather than a blatant setup for a later instalment. In short, it’s just a bit better than its (admittedly faint) reputation would suggest—my inner teenage boy was impressed enough by the big truck carnage.
