before returning to his shoot-em-up video game.
But the next morning, the game has transformed into a glowing green video-cartridge accompanied by enticing jungle drums.
He pops it in and gets consumed by it.
Frank Masi/Sony Pictures
Cut to two decades later, and we meet our cast of high school teens.
The beefy jock is now Harts pint-sized scaredy cat Moose Finbar.
The Sheedy-ish one is now Gillans sexy, Lara Croft butt-kicking babe Ruby Roundhouse.
And the vain, millennial beauty queen is now…Blacks fey, middle-aged, pot-bellied Professor Shelly Oberon.
The fact that she now has a penis is considered the height of hilarity.
The films follow-the-map and solve-the-riddle odyssey is goosed along by Harts better-than-the-rest-of-the-movie motormouth shtick.
And Johnsons nerd-trapped-in-a-superhero-body routine appears more effortless than it must have been.
I dont want to sound like a joyless crank.
Some of this is kind of amusing.
But the laughs are strictly of the lowest-hanging-fruit variety.
In a sidenote, the Hawaii locations look nice.
The underlying message of the film is that you cant judge a book by its cover.
That these reluctant partners have to work through their differences and become a team.
Its hard to argue with something as well-intentioned as that.
Its a diverting, mildly amusing, competent bit of big-budget studio product.
And maybe those are the stakes were now playing for these days.
