A totally unnecessary remake of MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, an '80s movie which manages to be fun, cheesy and exceptionally bad at the same time. TRUCKS, however, is a television movie, and we all know the arid desert of creativity and originality that television movies are. Yes, here we have a plot less, incredibly dull movie where nothing much happens, a few people die bloodlessly and lots of stupid things happen to some incredibly stupid people. If you get the feeling I didn't like this film, you'd be right.
I don't think much needs to be said about the static direction or basic nature of this film - if you're unsure of what I mean, just watch one of the endless killer nature/haunted house television movies to have come out in the past decade and you'll be there. Remember how in MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE we witnessed people getting killed by coke machines, boys being run over by steam rollers and the like? There's nothing of that here. What little violence there was has been cut out of the version I watched on TV, making this a worthless experience. This just consists of people either running around, waiting or "bonding". Yuck.
The cast is a particularly bad one. I've found that I usually recognise at least one or two people in a television movie, with the rest being unknown to me. Here I noticed Brenda Bakke, that tireless beauty who has toiled through trash like TALES FROM THE CRYPT PRESENTS: DEMON KNIGHT for the good of mankind, getting by on her looks alone. It's sad when she's the best thing in a movie. Timothy Busfield is the geeky hero, there's an obnoxious teenage girl who reminded me of Molly Ringwald in SPACEHUNTER and was no less irritating, a boring old man who you just know is going to get killed, an annoying little kid who looks like Alfred E. Newman, and two dumb rednecks who manage to blow themselves up. And that is this film's entire cast.
At least MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE had something of a plot, with the trucks planning to take over mankind. This is like they took the first half hour of that film and stretched it out to one and a half hours. There isn't even a conclusion, just a silly twist ending where our heroes board a helicopter which they think is rescuing them, only to find out nobody is flying it. How overdone, how stupid. I liked a scene towards the end where a repairman gets electrocuted, which seems to have been inserted just to pad out the running time and has no connection with the rest of the film at all.
This is a film where lots of buildings explode in huge clouds for no reason whatsoever, where there's 90% talk and 10% action. This is an uninspired and dumb mess. The one moment I did like in this film happens about halfway through, where we see a truck fill a contamination suit with air, and uses the suit to axe a couple of unfortunates to death. This two minute scene is the ONE moment of creativity that this film has to offer. Give it a miss!
I don't think much needs to be said about the static direction or basic nature of this film - if you're unsure of what I mean, just watch one of the endless killer nature/haunted house television movies to have come out in the past decade and you'll be there. Remember how in MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE we witnessed people getting killed by coke machines, boys being run over by steam rollers and the like? There's nothing of that here. What little violence there was has been cut out of the version I watched on TV, making this a worthless experience. This just consists of people either running around, waiting or "bonding". Yuck.
The cast is a particularly bad one. I've found that I usually recognise at least one or two people in a television movie, with the rest being unknown to me. Here I noticed Brenda Bakke, that tireless beauty who has toiled through trash like TALES FROM THE CRYPT PRESENTS: DEMON KNIGHT for the good of mankind, getting by on her looks alone. It's sad when she's the best thing in a movie. Timothy Busfield is the geeky hero, there's an obnoxious teenage girl who reminded me of Molly Ringwald in SPACEHUNTER and was no less irritating, a boring old man who you just know is going to get killed, an annoying little kid who looks like Alfred E. Newman, and two dumb rednecks who manage to blow themselves up. And that is this film's entire cast.
At least MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE had something of a plot, with the trucks planning to take over mankind. This is like they took the first half hour of that film and stretched it out to one and a half hours. There isn't even a conclusion, just a silly twist ending where our heroes board a helicopter which they think is rescuing them, only to find out nobody is flying it. How overdone, how stupid. I liked a scene towards the end where a repairman gets electrocuted, which seems to have been inserted just to pad out the running time and has no connection with the rest of the film at all.
This is a film where lots of buildings explode in huge clouds for no reason whatsoever, where there's 90% talk and 10% action. This is an uninspired and dumb mess. The one moment I did like in this film happens about halfway through, where we see a truck fill a contamination suit with air, and uses the suit to axe a couple of unfortunates to death. This two minute scene is the ONE moment of creativity that this film has to offer. Give it a miss!