3 old friends and the uncanny valley

Rating: 7/10 (1 January 2020)

This movie is good, let there be no doubt about that. However it is being dragged down a notch by the main casts age and the solution they came up with to get around that fact. The de-aging tech they used from Star Wars/Captain Marvel etc. is good but not good enough to pull them out of of the uncanny valley. Which is basically a cgi effect mimmicking reality very closely but not good enough for our brain to spot the difference. This movie suffers from that greatly. De Niro, Pacino and Pesci are all respectable old men and great actors, but they can't hide that they have tired old bodies. The De-aging works on the face but not on their posture. The uncanny valley hits you because they look like 49, but they movie like 80 year old men. Especially De Niro suffers from this. Of all 3 actors De Niro looks the most tired, while he actually has the most active role, which causes a disconnect with the audience. I agree with lots of other reviewers that the younger years should have been played by younger actors, which would have increased the energy of this movie. As it stands right now it feels like a nostalgic project between 4 tired old friends trying to relive their hay days.