'THE GREAT WALL'..........MATT GOES A LONG WAY FOR TAKEOUT......

The Great Wall (2016)    This movie cries out to be eviscerated......after all, it's a textbook example of how Hollywood studios preside over the death of  cinema.......pouring obscene amounts of money into bloated CG Eyesores that find little favor with American moviegoers, but get slurped up by millions of mouth-breathers in China and the Third World........they pounce on tripe like this with the fervor of puppies tearing through a box of Purina bacon treats.....

               And technically, we should especially rage at this one......an unholy alliance of American and Chinese filmmakers, eager to vacuum up ticket money from a worldwide audience of brain dead popcorn gobblers.......enticing them by spicing up the movie with superstars from both continents, Matt Damon and Andy Lau........

               Couldn't bring ourselves to sink the blade in........we simply sat back, laughing hysterically at all the frenzied lunacy........and at 1 hour and 43 minutes, at least this circus moved swiftly along....

               Matt and Some Other Guy play leather-clad mercenaries wandering through ancient China, seeking out a jumbo order of gunpowder to go......so the Western world can get in on the fun of shooting people and blowing up stuff real good......

               They end up stuck on....yep....the Great Wall, drafted into the Chinese army's pitched battles with zillions of CGI teeth-snapping whatevers........the whatevers regularly lay waste to the humans in sequences that appear carbon copied from the Big Bug battles in "Starship Troopers"....

              According the movie's mythology, which, honestly, we didn't pay much attention to, the teeth-snappers pour out of a mountainside every so often to thin out the population.....just in case China's one-family-one-child rule doesn't work out.....

               For anyone itching to do their own 'Mystery Science Theater 3000' at home, this movie's a treasure trove, the mother lode........the Chinese deploy a cadre of babes in cobalt blue outfits who bungee jump off diving boards into the monster hordes...whoopee......in a few scenes,as if it somehow matters, Matt takes a stab at a British accent, sounding like a guy who, after five beers, unwisely attempted a Sean Connery impersonation.........

               Meanwhile, Andy Lau,  the Chinese army's master Strategist (that's his actual job title, a description unheard of in the Trump administration) pursues his agenda.....to kill the monster queen.......which come to think of it, is the exact same strategy as the Terminex guy we hired to spray the crawlspace under the house.  The Monster Queen, to rally her teeth-snappin' troops,  vibrates a membrane at the top of her head, probably similar to what Kim Kardashian does when she thinks photographers are in the vicinity.......

                  Anyhoo......need we describe more?  Like slowing down to rubberneck a car wreck on the Interstate, we took it all in, shaking our heads in amazed wonder.  If nothing else, we hope Matt sucked up enough yen converted into bucks to put all his kids through college.......for "The Great Wall", we'll order up 1 & 1/2 eggrolls to go....(* 1/2)