What the Helllllalalalala…Has the ROCK…Been Smoking?

Dear Dwayne Johnson – what are you thinking?

When Arnold Schwarzenegger showed up in The Rundown, it was supposed to be a spiritual passing of the baton. A sign that at last, a muscular ass-kicker of old-school heroics was going to be our new action hero. Every indication we had was that you understood this, having attained popularity in the wrestling ring when you ditched your family friendly “Rocky Maivia” personality to become a smart-talking jerk who made jokes about monkey anuses.

But then we got The Game Plan. The Tooth Fairy. And now, you’re making a movie about a teddy bear?

The Rock Ted…The Rock Ted knows his role!

Way to gain back your tough-guy cred after mocking John Cena’s. As you head back to wrestling to take on CM Punk for some seasonal matches…you announce a teddy bear movie. Something Seth MacFarlane already did.

It’s true that Arnold made family movies as well. But with the possible exception of Kindergarten Cop, which lives on forever because he can’t say “tumor” correctly, nobody really likes them that much. And to the extent that they did back in the ’80s and ’90s, it was because he was finally making jokes about himself, something you’ve done since day one.

I didn’t like Fast Five much myself (a franchise movie about street racing, now not showing any street races at all), but it was the right kind of thing to do.

You seem like a very nice guy. And that’s the problem. Action heroes shouldn’t be nice guys. They should be righteously bullheaded, hamstrung by legal technicalities from just shooting everybody, and still our last best hope when a villain comes along who’s even worse than any excessively brutal lawman could ever be.

Oh wait…that was Dredd. And I guess that didn’t make much money. Fine, Dwayne, make a Pound Puppies movie next. It’ll rake in the cash.

What kind of topsy-turvy world do we live in?

(okay, I promise, no more wrestling-related stuff today)