Simon Sez Go Away
Summary
Simon Sez is one of the worst action movies I’ve seen for a long time mostly due to a terrible script which made everyone annoying, especially Dane Cook. Whenever Dennis Rodman seems restrained in comparison then you know things went too far. It at least has some nice locations and the action isn’t terrible, but that doesn’t make this any more watchable.
Plot: Interpol agent Simon (Dennis Rodman) is gathering information about the weapons trade on the French Riviera and trying to pinpoint the man at its center. Meanwhile, Nick (Dane Cook) — an old classmate of Simon’s — asks him for help. Nick needs to rescue his employer’s daughter, who appears to have been kidnapped by the same people Simon is tracking down. The pair must get to the bottom of the increasingly dangerous situation with the help of two monks and a feisty woman.
Review: I had only ever heard terrible things about this movie, so I deliberately avoided it, but I was feeling masochistic recently and decided I would finally give it a shot.
It’s hard to believe Simon Sez is directed by Kevin Alyn Elders who wrote the Iron Eagle franchise; I particularly love the first film, but I think he must have just done this movie just for the paycheck.
Simon Sez is arguably one of the least entertaining movies I’ve ever seen and believe it or not Dennis Rodman isn’t the worst thing about it; that honour goes to Dane Cook who plays one of the most annoying characters of all time. He spends the movie doing impressions of dinosaurs, making stupid noises and never shutting up for more than a few seconds.
I always loved John Pinette, but even he couldn’t save this clunker of a movie. The script is dire, and it all feels like a live action cartoon… but not a good one. The absolute low point was after a car chase Simon (Rodman) drives his car off a cliff and it had a parachute, so they float unconvincingly on to a beach below.
I always try to say something positive about a movie even if I hated it, so I will say that some of the action is slick and that’s mostly due to Xin Xin Xiong’s fight choreography. He also stars as the main henchman imaginatively named Xin Xin. We got some real explosions, and the aforementioned car chase was decent; the runtime at least is also pleasingly short at 85 minutes.
Our main villain Ashton (Jérôme Pradon) is about as threatening as a baby capybara, but he does seem to enjoy chewing the scenery.
This is meant to be a comedy, but I’ve had funnier root canals; Dennis Rodman was never a convincing actor, but at least with Double Team JCVD was there to pick up the slack. Rodman also showed some personality in that movie, but he just seems to be going through the motions here with everyone else being irritating. He also seemedto have a thing with Monks who are good with technology.
Brian Tyler provides one of his earlier scores and it’s fine, but it’s not one of his most memorable works.
Overall, Simon Sez is one of the worst action movies I’ve seen in a long time, and it deserves the 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Everyone is annoying in it and despite a few decent action scenes this should best be avoided.