Machete Kills - again, and a lot

I'm not writing as many reviews as I used to, mainly because I'm now a lot busier than I used to be, but also because I am not watching as many films as in the past.  That plus I've been on holiday recently and a whole bunch of other stuff.  However, I am still watching films.  So I thought I would write a quick review of something I don't think I would normally bother with, mainly to confirm that this blog is still live and that I am still nerdily over-thinking about films.

Machete Kills eh?  I don't think there's much more you need to know about the tone of this film that can't be summed up by telling you that Charlie Sheen plays the President.  In a follow-up to the ludicrously entertaining Machete, Danny Trejo returns as the eponymous anti-hero who slices, chops, shoots and explodes his way through this homage to terrible 1970s action genre schlock.  My enjoyment of Machete is something of a guilty pleasure, the film takes so much joy in its own ridiculousness it's impossible not to go along with it.  There are only so many times you can return to the same theme though and it not seem tired, and while Machete Kills is enjoyable for many of the same reasons as its predecessor, it really is just more of the same.

I can't quite work out where the line lies between spoof and laziness.  Machete Kills has an opening scene that's laden with digitally-added blood and gore effects, I can't decide if that's an homage to bad special effects of the 1970s or just a lazy way of recreating the effects of blood squibs.  Perhaps the names on the cast list are what we should be looking at to know how seriously to take all this.  Lady Gaga (complete with toned down hair) and Mel Gibson are on the bill.  To be fair to Gibson he looks like he has the tone spot on, taking everything just as seriously as it needs to be taken in order to make sure it doesn't turn into a complete farce.

Ok so it might be more of the same and it might be objectively rubbish; but it is only 100 minutes long and "They fucked with the wrong Mexican" still makes me giggle.  Let's be honest - if you think you're about to watch Casablanca then you're severely misunderstood the nature of this genre - it's meant to be silly, spoofy and gore-filled with characters defined by either their brawns, boobs or brains.  Robert Rodriguez needs to move on at some point though, the spoof teaser trailer at the start of Machete Kills sets up a sequel that the end of the film allows for.  I think this might be as far as you can take it Mr Rodriguez, if I see Machete Kills Again out in cinemas I can finally see myself giving it a pass.

"Machete don't tweet"