Current Events > Review: The Rock fails in 'Black Adam' - possibly the worst movie ever

(+) Yeah! (+)

Black Adam does not deserve a bad review. A bad movie review would be too kind. It would imply that Black Adam is an actual movie.

Black Adam is something else a pounding and intrusive soundtrack, a plane colliding with a helicopter, a sprinkling of meaningless dialogue and an act of contempt toward its audience. It signals the moment where Dwayne The Rock Johnson started taking himself too seriously, or perhaps it was the filmmakers. Anyway, whoever is doing it, you need to stop.

The Hayward-born Johnson has always been reliably fun onscreen. Here his entrance is delayed, and his face is denied us as though he were Greta Garbo making a comeback appearance. His head is covered in a black hood, like the Ghost of Bad Cinema Future, and he just sits there, a lethal shape preparing to let loose. For 5,000 years, he has been entombed and unable to kill. Thats a lot of time to be building up hostility.

Black Adam is not an easy story to follow, especially as it creates no desire to follow it. The basic plot seems fairly simple, though convoluted and wholly lacking in interest. Kahndaq is a (fictional) Middle Eastern country being ruled by a military dictatorship. Adrianna (Sarah Shahi), an archaeologist, puts together a team to dig for the Crown of Sabbac. She believes the crown can confer great power, which she could use to overthrow the regime.

She finds the crown, but all hell breaks loose, and so does Black Adam (Johnson), whom Adrianna accidentally frees. Government troops arrive to take the crown back; whereupon, Black Adam starts killing everybody tossing them, melting them with a touch, etc. Missiles cant stop him. Nothing can stop him. Nothing can stop the awfulness.

Some other superheroes are called in, and these are strictly second-tier entries, not a Batman in the bunch. Theres Hawkman, played by Aldis Hodge; Cyclone, played by Quintessa Swindell; and Dr. Fate, played by Pierce Brosnan, who apparently doesnt think he has enough money. The one perverse almost-pleasure of Black Adam is in watching Brosnan try to invest emotion in a role thats as solid as wet tissue paper.

Oh, yes, and theres another superhero, one called Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), whose claim to fame is that he can make himself enormous. Thats it. He makes himself really big. Thats so creative! How did anybody ever come up with that?

Can we just say it? When you get past Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, the DC superheroes are a sorry lot. Admittedly, Im not crazy about Marvel, either, but thats beside the point. Im not a beer drinker, and yet I can still taste the difference between a good pilsner on tap and mop water. DC is mop water. They should quit before they embarrass themselves further.

Black Adam is 124 minutes long, and a good 90 minutes of it consists of fight scenes. Half of those scenes are of Black Adam fighting the other DC superheroes. Is there anything more boring than two superheroes fighting each other, when youre rooting for neither, and yet the movie expects you to like them both? Of course, they cant hurt each other, because wait for it theyre superheroes, and also because its middle of the movie. As everyone knows, you cant kill off the lead characters in the middle of a movie except when Janet Leigh is in it.

Seriously, dont see Black Adam. Dont encourage this. I dont even want to admit that its an actual movie, but assuming it is, its the worst of the year and one of the worst Ive ever seen.

Dudes mad

I dont even want to admit that its an actual movie

And 90 minutes of fight scenes? That seems like a fabulous endorsement

African American Adam

definitely looks cheesy as hell.

for those who seen it, is this the good kinda cheesy where you can have some unintentional laughs at least or the straight up bad one? lol

Black Adam is 124 minutes long, and a good 90 minutes of it consists of fight scenes.

Okay, now suddenly I give a damn.

African American Adam