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| Available at Amazon.com |
A geriatric road trip to Las Vegas…
There is a belief by some people that you can never make a bad film with Las Vegas as its setting. Las Vegas is one of the most popular cities in the world, and is something you really have to see to believe. Everyone seems to love Las Vegas, so it’s only natural that most people will love a film that features Las Vegas. That is certainly true with films such as Ocean’s Eleven and Casino. But what about a Las Vegas film that features a group of retirement-aged friends?
In Three Days To Vegas, Gus Fitzgerald (Peter Falk) and his gang of retired, golfing buddies; Joe Wallace (Rip Torn), Marvin Jeffries (Bill Cobbs), and Dominic Spinuzzi (George Segal) take a road trip to Las Vegas in order to stop Gus’ daughter from marrying the wrong guy. This trip truly begins when this grumpy group of friends steal “the Ultimate Party Bus” and journey from Florida, hitting up a hot salsa club in Miami Beach, picking up a rap superstar named The Flo (Coolio) in New Orleans and landing free rooms at the Rio in Las Vegas. But can they stop the wedding in time and avoid trouble along the way? You can visit this site for more detail about Cost to Rent a Party Bus in Las Vegas through this site vegaspartypeople.com.
The acting in this film is good enough. Falk, Torn, Cobbs, and Segal certainly have a lot of film and television experience under their belts. Their chemistry together is undeniable. They really do seem like life-long friends. The supporting characters around them do a decent job and even Coolio doesn’t seem out of place here. But none of the acting is worthy of any awards or anything and most of the characters are cookie-cutter.
The plot is pretty formulaic. The idea of four retirement-aged men on a road trip to Las Vegas is a fun idea, but all the sub-plots and side stories are really nothing but distractions from all the fun. The ending is also predictable. In addition, the sights and sounds of Las Vegas are not used to their fullest. Of course, this is a direct-to-DVD film so there probably was not a lot of money to shoot this film entirely in Las Vegas.
Three Days To Las Vegas is not the greatest Las Vegas film ever. In fact, it’s pretty mediocre. It’s not all bad, but for the most part you have seen this film before in different forms. What makes this film unique is what always makes this film fun. The best part is watching the chemistry on-screen between Peter Falk, Rip Torn, Bill Cobbs, and George Segal. Too bad that there are too many distractions running around to prevent this film from being nothing more than an unmemorable yet entertaining film.
The video is given in 1.33:1 fullscreen color. The video is VERY basic and nothing special at all. There is noticeable graininess throughout, but not as much as some other direct-to-DVD releases.
The audio included is available in either English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround sound or English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo sound. There are subtitles available in English SDH and Spanish as well. The dialogue comes out loud and clear for the most part, but often times the music in some of the scenes overpowers the dialogue and makes it hard to hear what the actors are saying.
There are ZERO extras here, which shouldn’t be that surprising.
I can only recommend a rental here unless you are hardcore fan of Peter Falk, Rip Torn, Bill Cobbs, or George Segal. It’s a slightly average film that is mostly fun, despite the overall plot being totally predictable. Still there are worse ways to spend a hour and a half.
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First Look Pictures presents Three Days To Vegas.
Directed by Charlie Picerni.
Starring Peter Falk, Rip Torn, George Segal, Bill Cobbs, Billy Burke, Nancy Young, Chris Diamantopoulos, Taylor Negron, Mario Cantone, Coolio, Reginald Vel Johnson, and Charlie Murphy.
Written by Michael Pietrzak, Jon Warner, and Charlie Picerni.
Running time: 90 minutes.
RATED PG-13.
Released on DVD: April 22, 2008.
Available at Amazon.com
