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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.
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63For 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.
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63The 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]
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63Last 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]
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60This 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.
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60Last 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.
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60The 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.
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60The 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.
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50Hero 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.
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50This 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]
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50Last 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.
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50The 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.
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50Last Action Hero does have occasional moments of humor, but overall it is lacking in fun or magic. [18 Jun 1993, p.1]
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42Director 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]
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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]
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40Last 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]
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25Last 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.
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12It'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]
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0The 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]
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HarrisonF7First Arnie movie I ever saw. This movie is good, but definitely not the best movie that stars Arnold Schwarzenegger.