White House Down

White House Down: Director Roland Emmerich has made watchable, fun trash before (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012). He's the new Irwin Allen (producer of The Towering Inferno), and I often get a kick out of his silly disaster movies. This one, starring Channing Tatum as a lawman who happens to be touring the White House when terrorists take over, is a complete bust. It's too stupid to be fun, and it doesn't offer enough cool special effects devastation to offset the moronic storytelling. (The Capitol getting destroyed is the only memorable moment of carnage.) Jamie Foxx plays the President, an Obama clone, taken hostage in a homeland terrorist scheme that's beyond impossible. Throw in a precocious daughter (Joey King) and James Woods doing his James Woods routine and you have a movie full to the brim with useless clichés. Tatum, so much fun in 21 Jump Street, is left stranded in a movie that couldn't be dumber if it tried, and Emmerich has given us one of the summer's worst movies and likely biggest bombs.