Movie Review: WHITE HOUSE DOWN Offers A Goofy Good Time
A lot of movies are stupid. But there is a very certain gap between "good" stupid and "bad" stupid. This year's strange double dose of "Die Hard in the White House" films offer us a better than average illustration of exactly how this works. The first entry, Olympus Has Fallen, was undoubtably stupid. But it was also pretty great. I found myself leaning forward throughout the whole film and ended up seeing it twice just to fully soak in all the head-stabbing mayhem. White House Down, on the other hand, is just dumb dumb, like a Saturday Morning Cartoon version of Olympus. While certainly enjoyable in its own way, the film is way too long, and I doubt I'll ever see it again. I already barely remember it.
White House Down's trailers sold a film which differentiated itself from Olympus Has Fallen due to its lighter tone, presumably bigger budget, and the buddy cop chemistry of Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx. The film has all that, but fails to deliver as fun a version as you probably hoped for. Most of the big moments that hit in the trailers ("Get your hands off my Jordans!") land with a thud in the actual film.
A bigger budget does not make for better action sequences, either. The big bad guy takedown of the White House comes off as laughably quaint compared to the balls to the wall American violation we see in Olympus Has Fallen. Even without that comparison point, all we get here is a bunch of people shooting each other and before you know it we're in the Die Hard portion of the film. It lacks dynamics and comes together far too easily. Another big showstopper involves Tatum and Foxx driving a car across the White House lawn for a while, skidding out and blowing things up with a rocket launcher before crashing into a pool because Slimer accidentally messed up the brakes. Stuff like that. It's fun but no competition for head stabbings.
Both Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx provide charm, but their time as a duo is surprisingly brief, and their chemistry with each other has more to do with their individual likability than any pizazz created by their unification. Just like with all of White House Down, their best moments together are all right there in the trailer.
Channing Tatum has a daughter who has been taken hostage along with a bunch of other White House tourists. His motivation is to save her life. This is slightly problematic from an audience perspective as his daughter may be the most obnoxious character in Roland Emmerich history. Watching this little kid fluff up her feathers and basically de-ball an armed and supposedly dangerous Jason Clarke hurts. It hurts the film, and it hurts your heart. She's basically this film's Melissa Leo, except instead of being dragged across the floor screaming the Pledge of Allegiance, she's precariously in charge of her own YouTube channel.
One good thing about the bigger budget is that this becomes one of those Hollywood productions where pretty much everyone you see is familiar and dependable. Richard Jenkins is in this film. Lance Reddick shows up. Even James Woods has a sizable role. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Jimmi Simpson appears as a quirky lollipop sucking computer wizard who ensures no one will accidentally take this film seriously. Everyone phones their performance in, but in a way that fits the entire enterprise's overall tone. White House Down often feels like the kind of goofy disaster films we got in the '90s. It recalls Jan de Bont more than John McTiernan.
And like those films, White House Down is the kind of movie you only watch with half your brain while the other half is busy making better films out of the many strange but unexplored details thrown at you. For instance, instead of really paying attention to Channing Tatum's inability to be a hero in his daughter's eyes, I was far more interested in his ex-wife, an orange-haired hippie who looks like someone paying their way through clown college by stripping on the side. What brought them together as a couple? What broke them apart? I'm not usually a romance fan, but I wish I knew. How do you dump Channing Tatum? How is that humanly possible? She doesn't seem to hate him, even. So where did it go wrong, Mrs. Lady? Where?
As a Die Hard ripoff, White House Down does honor the rules, far moreseo than Olympus Has Fallen. And frankly, in a world where even the Die Hard movies can't get this right, that counts for something. The main guy is a reluctant hero with a family member to save. He dons a dirty undershirt. The whole film takes place over the course of one day. But the film is too slight for any of that to matter. And it's way too goofy to justify a 2hr+ running time. For those who have already decided to see it, you'll probably enjoy yourselves. This is a perfect movie to see once with a crowded audience and then never think about again. For those still on the fence, stay there with a picket in your butt until something better comes along.
