{"id":2262,"date":"2013-11-04T17:00:16","date_gmt":"2013-11-05T00:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/?p=2262"},"modified":"2013-11-12T13:40:26","modified_gmt":"2013-11-12T20:40:26","slug":"last-vegas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/2013\/11\/04\/last-vegas\/","title":{"rendered":"Last Vegas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"LastVegas\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Directed by: Jon Turtletaub
\nStarring: Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro, Kevin Kline, Michael Douglas, Mary Steenburgen, Romany Malco, Michael Ealy
\nRated: PG-13 on appeal for sexual content and language<\/p>\n

Movies about older people are becoming more and more common as a certain population segment finds themselves aging. \u201cLast Vegas\u201d is the latest of this genre, a blend of jokes about aging and mild introspection about how older people should live. Like others before it, it has a fabulous cast and some good dialog, and succeeds at what it sets out to do. It\u2019s not \u201cCitizen Kane,\u201d but it\u2019s not trying to be. This is a movie to see if you want some laughs and don\u2019t mind if the comedy is a bit broad at times.<\/p>\n

Billy (Michael Douglas), Paddy (Robert De Niro), Archie (Morgan Freeman) and Sam (Kevin Kline) have been friends since they were children. Now they\u2019re all pushing seventy, Archie has moved in with his son after having a stroke, Paddy is still grieving his late wife, and Sam is starting to freak out at how his and his wife\u2019s retirement in Florida is going. Billy, meanwhile, is rich and single and doing his best to live the life of a thirty-year-old. When he proposes to his thirty-two year old girlfriend, Archie and Sam decide to get the gang back together for a bachelor party in Las Vegas. Paddy has to be tricked into coming, as he and Billy have bad blood between them, but soon the foursome are back together.<\/p>\n

The four central actors have good chemistry together, and look to be having a lot of fun. Sam\u2019s wife has given him permission to sleep with someone else while in Vegas, so Kline has plenty of opportunities to use his gift for comedic timing. Douglas is solid in a role that requires both bravado and pathos, and his scenes playing off De Niro enable both actors to demonstrate their gifts for blending comedy and drama. Freeman is iconic as ever as the solid center around which the group friendship revolves. Archie is handling his aging better than anybody else in the film, including his son (a bundle of concern played well by Michael Ealy).<\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t a lot that stands out either positively or negatively in \u201cLast Vegas.\u201d It\u2019s good but not great, funny but not hilarious, clever but not brilliant. It\u2019s also not terrible \u2013 for one thing, a potentially offensive and terrible situation (Sam hitting on someone who turns out to be a drag queen) is handled with a great deal of humor and poise. There\u2019s some juvenile humor, but nothing awful. This is a film that treads lightly and walks down the middle of the road.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re just looking for an amusing way to spend a couple of hours, you could do a lot worse than seeing \u201cLast Vegas.\u201d If you\u2019re a fan of any of the main actors, it\u2019s a must-see, but otherwise it\u2019s not particularly striking either way.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Movies about older people are becoming more and more common as a certain population segment finds themselves aging. \u201cLast Vegas\u201d is the latest of this genre, a blend of jokes about aging and mild introspection about how older people should live. Like others before it, it has a fabulous cast and some good dialog, and succeeds at what it sets out to do. It\u2019s not \u201cCitizen Kane,\u201d but it\u2019s not trying to be. This is a movie to see if you want some laughs and don\u2019t mind if the comedy is a bit broad at times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[62,20,57],"class_list":["post-2262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-comedy","tag-mediocrity-at-its-finest","tag-rated-pg-13"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/LastVegas.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2oSX4-Au","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2264,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2262\/revisions\/2264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}