White House Down

Yesterday was $5 Wednesday at our local theater, so Abbey, Noah and I wanted to take advantage of it to see a movie that we normally wouldn't pay full price to see. Problem was, with two new releases (Despicable Me 2 and The Lone Ranger) we had trouble getting in the door and once we did, discovered our movie was sold out. Since Sunday, we'd gone through several misunderstandings and communications errors trying to see it, so I was determined...probably wrongly so...to watch White House Down last night. We drove to the next theatre over and yes, payed full price.

Lesson learned, and hopefully remembered, it wasn't worth it. 

Here's why: It starts off well and has good intentions. To me, it fizzled in the end though. I do give a thumbs up to young actress, Joey King. She is superb as Channing Tatum's daughter, Emily. You may remember her piercing blue eyes as the Older Prison Child in Batman: Dark Knight Rises. More recently, we have seen her in Oz the Great and Powerful, giving voice to The China Girl.

Richard Jenkins is great, as usual and Maggie Gyllenhaal is just a fine actress, although I felt that she probably didn't have great material to work with in the first place. This is the first time I've seen anything involving Channing Tatum...and he was okay. Jamie Foxx was the actor that, for me, was most disappointing. I kept thinking, "This is the guy who won an Oscar for playing Ray Charles?"

Admittedly, there were a few scenes where I laughed out loud and others where I enjoyed the explosions and fight scenes (I know...not what someone who wants to be a pacifist should be putting in their head, right?) but in the end, I could only give it about a B rating...entertaining, but not a "must see". If you like action movies, with a little humor, go see it...just don't pay full price!