Terribly amusing... but more Terrible than amusing.

Rating: 4/10 (19 April 2015)

"It is soooo good! Oh my god you will cry at the end! Such a good film, Paul Walker was amazing!"
...are all I seem to be hearing about this film, which I reluctantly went to see. Meh, I thought, a it'll be some mindless violence and if people are raving about it, perhaps it will be better than I expect...
...It wasn't.
Fans of the films are going to love it either way. Everyone else will be divided by either how gullible they are, how much they enjoy mindless action, and how humorous they find things.
Don't me wrong, I absolutely love mindless action movies, But the thing for me with this movie, is that it's not actually clear if they are taking the film seriously. I know, obviously it's not meant to be realistic, but if they aren't taking it too seriously then they do a bad job of showing it.
Usually in decent action films, the characters sometimes reference how out of control a situation is. Even if it's just a "woah that's crazy" or Take Bad Boy's II for example. They had cars thrown at them during the chase scene, but it was OK because the characters acknowledged that it was not a normal thing to be happening "They're throwing cars at us Marcus, how am I not seeing that!?" With Furious 7, not a single character seemed to realise what they were doing was complete and utter bonkers. (It still baffles me how they can drive a car through three skyscrapers and everyone just acts as if it's no biggie).
And oh the cheese! In the end I spent more time laughing out loud at the films ridiculousness, than actually really even enjoying it.
This film oozes with cheesy dialogue, cheesy clichés and cheesy performances.
The nail in the ol coffin even came pretty early on when they jumped the shark with Statham and Diesel crashing their cars head on to each other and getting out with a scratch. From there, I couldn't take anything they did at all seriously. Everything was laughable, even the obviously supposed 'dramatic' parts such as the aftermath of Vin Diesel pulling a 'Die Hard' and trying to take down a helicopter with a car.
At least JohnMcClain had the sensibility to get out of the car first.
Plot wise, trying to make it anything more than a revenge film, just made it a mess. In some parts, it even felt like watching cut scenes from a game.
Annnnd now onto the Paul Walker send off. Personally I thought it was OK, kinda cheesy, and didn't stir up any emotions. (For me his best role was in Running Scared, so his character in this was 'meh' to me.)
They did do well making a film with one of the main cast passing during shooting, however it was just not a good film. And I refuse to give it praise just because it was Paul Walkers last film. A bad film is a bad film.
In the end I give it a 4, but more like a 5 just sheerly because I really did enjoy laughing at it.