Monster Trucks

Dir: Chris Wedge

2016

*

I had assumed that the concept of Monster Trucks was based on an old toy line, indeed I had convinced myself that I had owned such a toy back in the early 80s. This would have made some sense to me, not everyone would have been on board but the studio would have though “Yeah, okay, so some guys in their 40s might go and see it and we can do a deal with Mattel for a retro toy line”, so money will be made, but no, this was not the case. The original poster looks like a spoof, a classic b-movie that didn’t really exist, an idea Homer Simpson would have come up with in an early 90s episode of The Simpsons. It was actually written by Derek Connolly who wrote the Jurassic World movies, based on a story written by Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger and Matthew Robinson. Now I didn’t care much for the first two Jurassic World movies but many people did and it was an already established franchise. He also wrote Safety Not Guarantied, an overrated film in my opinion but not bad and still well received. Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger and Matthew Robinson are responsible for films such as The Invention of Lying, Monsters vs. Aliens, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, Trolls and the animated TV show King of the Hill. I loved King of the Hill back in the day and even though I thought I’d hate all the other films, I ended up really enjoying them, mainly thanks to their silliness. Monster Trucks is silly but it is so much more than that – it is utterly stupid. I think the only way the idea could have worked was if the film makers had traveled back in time to 1986 and made it into a kids cartoon. No doubt it would have been made into a disappointing live-action film around 1990 with cheap effects but it still would have reached cult status and we’d all be talking about how much we love it even though it was terrible. I would bet my favorite shoes that in 2046, absolutely no one will look back at 2016’s Monster Trucks and say “Hey, wasn’t that film so bad it was good”? I will raise my stake and throw my favorite trousers on the table and bet that in 2046 no one will even remember Monster Trucks – including those that worked on it. Is this really where creative writing is in Hollywood these days? These guys get paid actual money for coming up with these ideas. Can you imagine? 

“Hey guys, you know Monster Trucks? Well, what if the truck actually was a monster”?

“What, an actual monster”?

“No, a giant squid that sort of looks like a five year old drew it”

“And this giant squid turns into a truck”?

“No, it just acts as the trucks engine”

“Brilliant, here’s $125 million”

That isn’t a made up number either. This film cost $125 million and that was before promotional costs. It is estimated that the film ended up costing the studio $123.1 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues. It really does make me wonder why I’m not a screenwriter in Hollywood. It makes me wonder why we’re not all Hollywood screenwriters. I’ve written loads of rubbish scripts and not one of them has been green-lit. Maybe they thought they had the next E.T. on their hands, I don’t know, but there must have been hundreds of people who looked at Monster Trucks and decided that A. It was a good story and B. It would make money. The thing I find astonishing about Monster Trucks – the stupidest film ever made – was that I didn’t hate it. I’ll be enjoying headaches and dancing to car alarms next but even though I felt nothing but disgust for the people who made it, I watched it without switching off or becoming upset. Remember cassette tapes? Well, I’ve started to think that watching as many films as I do is a bit like listening to cassette tapes in the late 80s. In order to clean your overused tape player you would occasionally play a cassette head cleaner – a cassette that would play silently for a minute and clean the playback heads in ones ghetto blaster. If you watch nothing but crap films then you must occasionally watch something of quality, so if like me you tend to watch only good films, then maybe sometimes you need to watch some crap films to address the balance and remind you what terrible really looks like. The next three star film you watch suddenly becomes a four star film and so much more enjoyable then it would have been if you hadn’t watched the crap beforehand. Crap films are therefore head cleaners for cinephiles and after watching Monster Trucks my head felt as fresh as a freshly made bed and as clean as the interior of a brand new car. I don’t really have anything specifically positive to say about the film itself other than it might get kids interested in the negatives of fracking but I very much doubt it. I like looking at Rob Lowe’s face and I like both Danny Glover and Barry Pepper. Lowe and Glover will be fine, they’ll survive the film but I do worry about Pepper. He didn’t deserve this and I hope he gets a break soon. I give zero f**ks about anyone else involved in the film, they get what they deserve and they are lucky to still have work. Still, I thank them all for reminding us what quality is and that time is precious and should never be wasted – unless you want to unclog your brain pipes that are full of rich goodness with a massive turd-shaped unclogger.