Getaway Is a Burning Car Wreck

Confession time: When we here at Newser HQ talked about which movie review roundup to write today, we decided on the car chase flick Getaway purely because the reviews looked so comically, overwhelmingly negative. As of this writing, it is at 1% on Rotten Tomatoes, with one positive review out of 71. Here's what people are saying:

• "Getaway is not a movie, it is a list of traffic violations," writes Colin Covert at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. In theory it could have been "a stupidly awesome live-action cartoon," but that would have required wit or craft. This has neither, nor any plot to speak of. "The movie's title contains the review: Get away."

• "Needless to say, the car does the best acting in the movie, and as for dialogue, I’ll take the Shelby’s purring and vrooming over anything the humans come up with," quips Kyle Smith at the New York Post. He didn't like the chases, either, calling them "a meaningless salad of imagery," slapped together with frenetic editing "in an effort to fool you into thinking that something exciting is going on."
• Numerous reviewers do mention one sublime, two-minute extended shot, in which the camera holds fast to its position on the front of one car. "How is it possible that such a spectacle got shoehorned into a movie with no other redeeming qualities?" asks Stephanie Merry at the Washington Post.
• A constantly grimacing Ethan Hawke "looks as if he’s either passing a kidney stone or trying to decide how best to torture his agent for getting him into this hurricane of hackitude," writes Peter Howell at the Toronto Star, while Selena Gomez "exhibits the acting range of a hubcap." But it's a testament to Hawke's star power that Getaway even came out. "A movie this bad would normally go straight to video, or to landfill."
• Oh and that one positive review? It's from Norman Wilner at NOW Toronto, and here's his glowing endorsement: "As a great man once said, people who like this sort of thing will like this sort of thing."

(More Ethan Hawke stories.)