REVIEW: Reach Me (2014)

Runtime: 92 Mins
Rated: PG-13
What To Expect: Montage of pointless cameos, extremely boring movie

One of the most impressive ensembles of actors in recent memory has them appear in a complete mess that has us writhing in boredom.  You might as well tell things like they are, especially when this movie in particular could well have quite a few fall victim to its lineup.  Sylvester Stallone, Thomas Jane, Tom Berenger… and those are just the ones that appeal to our niche.  There are others in there, not including the ‘I know that guy’ faces that you’ve seen in 13 other movies in supporting roles.  I talked recently about the DTV cameo con, where has beens, B-listers and even A-listers appear in a rotten-core VOD movie in a bait & switch scam to get people to buy a dud off the shelf with a famous name on it.  Well, Reach Me is that writ large.

A man writes a self help book, which then goes on to inspire a phonebook of actors appearing in cameos, so much that their characters try to seek out said author and… I dunno, say hello?  On their journeys, their paths often cross – probably when two actors schedules had intersected on a given day or week of filming.  This is a dramedy rip off of Crash (2004) with aspirations at being something similar, also, to Pulp Fiction.  Only with soap operatic tangents that nobody in the slightest could give a solitary fuck about.  The only reason I’m reviewing this is because some actors that regularly appear on the coverage of this site are in it.  And I’m putting out the warning – do not tread here.

Reach Me is an agonizing 92 minutes of pointlessness.  The likes of Crash or Pulp Fiction had separate arcs all tied together in some form.  In this, the ‘stories’ are YouTube-sized pieces of monotony, often with downright awful acting and correlate in little to no way at all.  It’s like a montage of demo reels for actors, such as Tom Berenger or ‘that chick from the Walking Dead’, Lauren Cohan.  It tries to elevate things and win over its victims by going for humor, only to prolong the suffering.

People are probably wondering what Stallone’s role is like.  It’s crap.  He plays an eccentric political blogger who charges words of wisdom at some F-rate actor.  Think the ‘that’s how winning is done’ scene from Balboa, only with bug-eyed aggression and screaming.  It’s actually a good performance, his best since that movie, but as a Stallone movie it belongs back there in the dark old Avenging Angelo days.  Stallone may have made a terrible move with The Expendables 3 this year, but man, I really don’t wish this kind of crap on him.  I couldn’t stand to see it continue.  The same for Tom Berenger and Thomas Jane.

What a foul stench Reach Me has left, somebody bury copies of it at that E.T. The Videogame landfill…