In this episode we review "Roadhouse", the remake of the classic Patrick Swayze film from 1989. It is currently streaming on #primevideo.
The reviewers are:
- Emma Sewell of Emma@The Movies (https://x.com/EmmaAtTheMovies) &
- Scott Forbes from The Forbes Film & TV Review on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/theforbesfilmreview/)
The video version of the podcast is available here: https://youtu.be/KTtU-HaX28Q
AI Show Notes
Summary
In this episode of Flickering Dreams, Emma Sewell and Scott Forbes discuss the remake of the film Roadhouse, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Emma had watched both the original and the remake back-to-back and felt that the original was much better. They both agreed that Gyllenhaal's performance was over-the-top and cartoonish, and that the film became increasingly silly as it progressed. They also felt that the female cast was wasted and had very little to do. Overall, they gave the remake a score of six out of ten and recommended watching the original instead.
Takeaways
- The original Roadhouse film is considered to be much better than the remake.
- Conor McGregor's performance in the remake was criticized for being over-the-top and cartoonish.
- The film became increasingly silly and had unnecessary action sequences.
- The female cast was wasted and had very little to do.
- The remake received a score of six out of ten and was recommended to watch the original instead.
Music: Hip Jazz by Bensound.
Any clips used are taken from YouTube trailers or posted clips. Copyright remains with the original owners. As this podcast involves review, criticism and observation on the copyrighted materials, the clips are used under a ‘Fair Use’ policy. If copyright owners object to such use, please email bobthemovieman1@gmail.com and they will be removed.
Emma Sewell (00:00)
Hi and welcome to this new episode of Flickering Dreams. I'm Emma Sewell from Emma at the Movies and I'm joined by Scott Forbes from Forbes Film and TV reviews on Facebook. Today we are going to be talking about Roadhouse which is the remake of 80s
similar version as this one starring Jake Gyllenhaal and he plays an ex fighter and he takes a job as a bouncer at a roadhouse and tries to protect it from all of the... gangs and criminal type people. Here's a clip.
As is usual on this podcast, surprise, surprise, I haven't seen a film for a very long time ago. So what I actually did this time around is I watched both of them back to back. So I feel like I made a mistake because I watched...
the original one with Patrick Swayze. And it's my era of film and I absolutely loved it. I really, really enjoyed it. So I was quite optimistic about the new one. I was really hoping I was going to see something amazing. While I enjoyed it, I think I would have enjoyed it more had I not watched the original one first.
They've kept the same sort of theme so, you know, Dalton comes in to clean up the road house and, you know, just sort it out and generally get it back to being a nice sort of place. But the old fashioned way works really well in this scenario and I don't think in a modern version.
it works at all in any context. And particularly, and I've forgotten his name already, Conor McGregor. I mean, I don't know anything about this as a sport. He's just so awful. Just not good. Jake Gyllenhaal love his roles, but.
Having to work off McGregor, it just did not work because McGregor was almost cartoonish in most of the scenes. And he has the issue of many built men where the arms don't touch the sides. So he's walking about quite stiff and animated and...
There were some bits I was like, okay, I've misjudged like how he's doing in this role, but I think had they stuck more to the original story, I think I would have got along with it better, but he was so animated and so over the top that they took all the things that I appreciated from the original one, and...
just exploded it into throwaway action which I do love but in this instance just did not work for me at all. Scott what did you think?
Scott Forbes (03:42)
Yeah, so when it comes to the original Roadhouse, I think I've only seen it once and it was a long time ago. So I went into this sort of knowing the story, but not completely remembering everything about it. To be honest, the thing that I think about when I hear Roadhouse nowadays is Family Guy, Roadhouse. And that is just a reference that I couldn't get out of my head because it's become its own meme through Family Guy.
Okay, so, Gyllenhaal, you can tell, great actor, he's in great shape, sort of back to his Southpaw sort of body. I thought he did surprisingly well for this film because it could quite easily have been a complete dud if we didn't have an actor of his caliber actually trying. And we know that this film was made tongue in cheek.
There's no doubts about it. They knew the type of film they were making here. And I don't think they were full out trying to make this a serious sort of action movie. We know that just from the casting. Because with Conor McGregor, yes, he's a former UFC fighter. And although I don't necessarily follow UFC or know too much about him,
I do know that in this film he was basically playing himself because he is like that in real life, which is just ridiculous. Like you're talking about his arms. you can look it up online. He quite famously has this sort of big swagger that he does and you're like, oh no, what a tool. I actually quite liked this film for the first half until he showed up because it was just.
Emma Sewell (05:14)
Yeah.
You
Scott Forbes (05:26)
a fine film, plodding along, not bad. And then he showed up and I was like, okay, now it's starting to get silly. And it just kept getting sillier because we got all the action, the explosions, the speedboat stuff, people flying through the air and surviving.
I won't say anymore for spoiler reasons for that. Let's just say it's unbelievable where this film goes to the point that by the end I was like, just throw my hands up. I like, what's the point even more? This is went from a okay, decent movie to no, this is actually quite silly. And I don't know why it was made to be honest, because it's not the kind of film that necessarily needs a remake. And if they're going to remake it,
Emma Sewell (05:46)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Scott Forbes (06:12)
Why would you put a star like Jake Gyllenhaal on it and then just dump it on Prime? It feels like it's the kind of name that could have had a cinema release. So I don't even know how this will do in terms of viewing figures. Yeah, I just, I thought it was fine, but I will probably forget that I watched it as well. It's not doing much for me in that sense.
Emma Sewell (06:25)
Hmm.
It did kind of make me wonder if they were trying to get Jake Gyllenhaal into that Patrick Swayze -esque sort of career timeline almost and have him do some of the same. Because I can sort of see why they would pick him for this role. But as you say, it didn't really need a remake.
They do very much, but at the end they sort of try to come back to the same sort of thing and I don't think that worked.
Scott Forbes (07:11)
Did you not find as well the female cast were completely wasted? Like they had barely anything to do and
Emma Sewell (07:18)
There was female cast? I -
Scott Forbes (07:21)
I know you barely know this, do you? It's like the owner of the actual Roadhouse could have been a really good character if they gave her more to do. The love interest, why she signed up after, assumingly, reading the script, I have no idea because... I know, she's like second cast as well. And yeah, she's completely anonymous for the majority of the movie. And even...
Emma Sewell (07:35)
I just forgot she was even in it. I just literally looked at the cast list.
Yeah.
Scott Forbes (07:48)
I said, even after you watch it, you're like, oh yeah, I forgot. There's more than just Jake Gyllenhaal and Conor McGregor in there. We do get a sort of semi -comedic villain performance from Billy Magnuson. It was okay. I don't mind him when he does this role, but it's very typical of the kind of thing he does. But yeah, just not much going on here.
Emma Sewell (08:07)
Yeah.
Go on then, how are you scoring it?
Scott Forbes (08:14)
Based on Gyllenhaal and how good he was in this, again, perhaps a little generous again, but I'm going to give this one a six.
Emma Sewell (08:20)
thankfully for my math skills I also went six so that makes the remake of Roadhouse a Flickering Dreams score of six out of ten which just makes it a miss I would personally suggest watching the original but it is on Prime as we say so do check it out if you fancy it.
So thank you for joining us, obviously. Go press all the buttons, like, subscribe, share, carrier pigeon it out to people, whatever you feel you need to do. Thanks for joining us.