A Dad (and Wife) review The Expendables and The A-Team

It’s two movies, so seemingly attached at the hip that they deserve to be reviewed together.  Over a three week period my wife and I saw both of these movies.  We weren’t locked in a room with these movies and neither one was so bad that it look an excessively long time to watch; we were just really busy caring for our toddler.

The Expendables

I really wanted to see this and after an exhausting week I rewarded myself.  Unfortunately my wife was just coming down with bronchitis, but she really wanted to be with me.  So I made a fire, got a blanket and put my wife who was harboring a four week cough bug on the other side of the sofa.

“Oh, I didn’t know it had Sylvester Stallone in it”, she said as the credits rolled.

“Yeah, but this movie made buckets of cash plus Stallone directed and wrote Rocky”, I countered.  Bringing up that Academy Award winning movie while mentioning Stallone is sometimes a man’s only defense in getting a woman to watch his movies.

The cast of The Expendables is amazing, Jet Li, Jason Statham, that girl from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and lots of other muscular dudes from the 80’s and WWE are all in this.  The plot has a lot in common with the title, something about a foreign dictatorship, am evil corporate guy and millions, perhaps billions of bullets.

The only thing that could weaken this throwback to 80’s action movies is some misplaced CGI.  Thankfully, there are only a couple instances where they used CGI.  Having said that, the scene where Stallone jumps into the plane with one arm should’ve ended up on the cutting room floor.

Expectations for this genre of movie are low and The Expendables easily surpassed them.  My wife didn’t care for it too much, but the movie isn’t marketed towards the estrogen camp.  She was quite the sport for staying with it though and I suppose that I owe her a viewing of The Princess Bride for this.

The A-Team

This movie came with huge word of mouth from some friends of ours.  I wasn’t too keen on seeing it because the first footage I saw from the movie was the worst scene: The Flying Tank.  However, when you watch the movie that scene works and adds to the huge enjoyment that you’ll have when watching this movie.

Yeah, The A-Team rocks.  It doesn’t follow the script to the television series to the letter either, it keeps you guessing throughout.  I say keep you guessing, wink, wink, you know what’s going to happen, but the fun is in watching them go about their merry plan.

The Punch Line

Because of better marketing (and aging stars) The Expendables is getting a quick sequel that will be released in 2012.  The A-Team is a much more enjoyable movie, but due to faulty marketing, its sequel will depend on success in the DVD market.  Women will love The A-Team and the movie was almost exclusively targeted at males

An added benefit of The A-Tem is that the movie is OK for young boys since it’s rated PG-13 for cartoon like violence.  The Expendables is R, for gore, violence and language.  Dads will like both movies, but enjoy The A-Team more.  Moms will watch The Expendables as a favor to their spouse, but enjoy watching The A-Team.