Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
76
(500) Days of Summer
49
2012
60
9
17
All About Steve
37
Amelia
53
Astro Boy
70
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
52
Blind Side
47
Box, The
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
55
Christmas Carol, A
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
23
Couples Retreat
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
34
Fourth Kind, The
41
G-Force
46
Halloween II
73
Hangover, The
78
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
66
Informant!, The
69
Inglourious Basterds
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
66
Julie & Julia
34
Law Abiding Citizen
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
28
Pandorum
58
Pirate Radio
39
Planet 51
30
Saw VI
53
Shorts
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
46
Twilight Saga: New Moon, The
71
Where the Wild Things Are
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
58
(Untitled)
96
35 Shots of Rum
56
Adam
39
Adventures of Power
66
Afterschool
73
Amreeka
49
Antichrist
76
Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86
Beaches of Agnes, The
71
Big Fan
65
Black Dynamite
76
Bliss
26
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
44
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81
Bright Star
76
Broken Embraces
70
Bronson
62
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
69
Cold Souls
60
Collapse
82
Cove, The
75
Crude
82
Damned United, The
53
Dare
50
Defamation
67
Departures
70
Earth Days
85
Education, An
55
Endgame
88
Fantastic Mr. Fox
31
Fix
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
xx
From Mexico with Love
28
Gentlemen Broncos
72
Good Hair
89
Goodbye Solo
63
Horse Boy, The
74
House of the Devil, The
xx
How to Seduce Difficult Women
26
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
70
It Might Get Loud
46
Killing Kasztner
43
Little Traitor, The
34
Looking for Palladin
80
Lorna's Silence
46
Love Hurts
84
Maid, The
45
Mammoth
75
Messenger, The
55
Missing Person, The
59
More Than a Game
34
Motherhood
62
My One and Only
48
New York, I Love You
66
No Impact Man
26
Oh My God
68
Paranormal Activity
68
Paris
79
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73
Red Cliff
69
September Issue, The
79
Serious Man, A
65
Skin
41
Splinterheads
42
Staten Island
50
Stoning of Soraya M., The
58
Storm
82
Sun, The
49
Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
73
That Evening Sun
61
Trucker
49
Turning Green
83
U2 3D
45
Uncertainty
67
Visual Acoustics
32
War on Kids
67
Way We Get By, The
65
Wedding Song, The
xx
White on Rice
59
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
74
Woman in Berlin, A
43
Women in Trouble
69
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Last Action Hero
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 19 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 2 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Action | Adventure | Comedy | Fantasy
Written by:
Zak Penn (story)
Adam Leff (story)
Shane Black
David Arnott
Directed by: John McTiernan
Release Date:
Theatrical: June 18, 1993
DVD: October 7, 1997
Running Time: 130 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for strong action sequences
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, F. Murray Abraham, Austin O'Brien, Art Carney, Charles Dance, Tom Noonan, Ian McKellen, and Anthony Quinn
Last Action Hero follows the adventures of 11-year-old Danny, whose magic ticket blasts him out of his theater seat and into an action movie. There he teams up with movie idol, Jack Slater, living his wildest fantasies in a celluloid world where anything is possible. (Sony Pictures)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Basic Die Hard Die Hard: With a Vengeance Predator Rollerball The 13th Warrior The Hunt for Red October The Thomas Crown Affair
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Washington Post Desson Howe
If there's one thing going for Last Action Hero, it's the construction of it all. Even if this intermixing of kid fantasy and adult shoot'em-up, Hollywood insider jokes and cheap Arnold puns, doesn't completely bowl you over, it's clever and intriguing.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Jay Carr
Last Action Hero is a spectacularly uneven movie. Its action is hectic, but scattershot and mostly pretty empty. On the other hand, it is entertaining in surprising ways. [18 Jun 1993, p.41]
Chicago Tribune Gene Siskel
The stunt work and special effects are top flight; Schwarzenegger and the kid are just fine, but we can't help but want this film to stop kidding around and thrill us. [18 Jun 1993, p.C]
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
For all of its sensational stunts and flashes of wit, however, Last Action Hero plays more like a bright idea than like a movie that was thought through. It doesn't evoke the mystery of the barrier between audience and screen the way Woody Allen did, and a lot of the time it simply seems to be standing around commenting on itself.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Vincent Canby
Last Action Hero is something of a mess, but a frequently enjoyable one. It tries to be too many things to too many different kinds of audiences, the result being that it will probably confuse, and perhaps even alienate, the hard-core action fans.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Hal Hinson
The movie isn't mindless; it just has a mind that's a bit junky and muddled. And to their credit, Arnold and his collaborators haven't played it safe. Last Action Hero is a stretch. Unfortunately, it's a stretch that proves the star wasn't that elastic to begin with.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
The performances of both Schwarzenegger and O'Brien are labored, the pacing uneven, and maybe only half the gags work, but there's a certain amount of creative energy and audacity mixed in with all the confusion.
Read Full Review >Empire Tom Hibbert
This is an attempt to be both a high-octane actionfest and a satire on such films, the result of which is the weirdest concoction: the metaphysical blockbuster. No wonder it tanked.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Staff (Not Credited)
Hero claims to be a gentle, playful parody of the action/adventure genre, but comes off as a mercenary attempt to cash in on summer movie-going habits.
Read Full Review >USA Today Susan Wloszczyna
This movie-within-a-movie action-comedy spoof is a too long, too loud tease as it toys with the Schwarzen-dude's well-toned cinematic image. [18 Jun 1993, p.1D]
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Last Action Hero does have occasional moments of humor, but overall it is lacking in fun or magic. [18 Jun 1993, p.1]
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
The film tries so very hard to be The Movie of Summer '93 that it almost makes you sick for what could have been, what should have been, and, in the end, what it is: soulless sound and fury -- action in a vacuum.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Last Action Hero is sporadically entertaining, but it could have been a whole lot more. Trimmed down and better edited, this film might have been a top-notch satire. As it is, however, it gets caught someplace in between action and comedy, and never really comes across as a solid example of either.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Staff (Not Credited)
the strongest emotion it whips up is an overwhelming desire to stop your ears against the stupid dialogue, bombastic sound effects, and atrocious music that assaults you every second - courtesy of Dynamic Digital Sound, a diabolical new development in technological overkill. Surely no good movie would feel the need to be so loud. [25 Jun 1993]
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Director John McTiernan is normally a competent director but he's simply not at his best here. He shows little flair for comedy, his performances are one-dimensional, and his action sequences are predictable and sometimes amazingly sloppy. [18 Jun 1993, p.5]
Time Richard Corliss
Last Action Hero starts out mostly nuts, and winds up mostly bolts. Or, rather, winds down. That's a problem with pastiche: it must be constantly jump-started with ingenuity, and even that ultimately pales. By the end, nothing matters. [21 June 1993, p67]
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Last Action Hero makes such a strenuous show of winking at the audience (and itself) that it seems to be celebrating nothing so much as its own awfulness. In a sense, the movie's incipient commercial failure completes it aesthetically.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
It's not a bomb at all. A dud is more like it - Last Action Hero isn't interesting enough to be explosively bad. For all the inflated pyrotechnics on the screen, the picture seems consistently grey and almost pitiably small. [18 Jun 1993, p.D1]
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
The script is weak and unrelenting. The stunts are unspectacular. The special effects are nothing you haven't seen before. But worst of all, there's the spectacle of Schwarzenegger glorying in the wonder of Schwarzenegger. [18 Jun 1993, p.C1]
What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 2 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Harrison F gave it a7:
First Arnie movie I ever saw. This movie is good, but definitely not the best movie that stars Arnold Schwarzenegger.
