Not Terrible, Just Terribly Mediocre

Rating: 4/10 (5 November 2017)

Imagine making a film about a woman that works as a cashier at a food court that has recently been opened inside an upscale jewelry store and calling it Breakfast at Tiffany's. Imagine making a film about a Russian immigrant that opens a pain meds clinic in the United States and calling it Doctor Zhivago. You get the idea. Neither of the ideas that I have listed here is inherently terrible, although neither one would probably be a masterpiece. The problem with these two ideas is that I have taken the title of a previously made film that was of a very high quality and a classic and grafted it onto my so-so film ideas. That is the problem with the 2015 "remake" of Point Break, a film released in 1991 about a group of extreme sports aficionados that finance their globetrotting pursuit of their hobby by robbing banks. That film was filled with imaginative storytelling and great action sequences and is the kind of film that you can watch over and over again.
Here's the thing. The 2015 version of Point Break is about a group of extreme sports aficionados that commit crimes not to finance their lifestyle, but as part of some high minded mumbo jumbo filled spiritual quest. In itself the 2015 film is not completely terrible, it just seems that way because the creators decided to graft the title of a really great and memorable film onto it and doomed it to being compared to a much better film. They should have called it Spirit Quest. I give it 4 out of 10 stars.