Endless weight

Michael Bay’s latest, Pain & Gain, has all of that Michael Bay crap that makes him one of my least favorite directors.

Actually, that’s an understatement: I think Michael Bay is basically a satanic cinematic force, with most of his films sustaining an artistic level I shall equate to a sickened elephant farting in a circus tent that’s been set aflame by dangerous clowns.

That said, he has actually made a few movies that I don’t hate. My favorite Bay film would be Bad Boys II, in which he seemed to be poking fun at himself. That slo-mo tracking shot of a bullet passing through Martin Lawrence’s ass is still the apex of Bay’s career. I also liked his innocuous sci-fi offering The Island, which actually featured edits more than a second long.

So I reluctantly admit to sort of liking Pain & Gain, mainly because Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson are a total crackup as two bodybuilders who take part in a kidnapping/extortion plot that actually really happened. Yes, this messed-up movie is actually based on a true story, and it’s remarkable how much of this insanity is accurate.

Wahlberg plays Daniel Lugo, a fitness instructor who is no doubt one of recent American criminal history’s greatest stupid assholes. When Lugo feels like his life is in a rut, he hatches a plan to kidnap a wealthy gym member (Tony Shalhoub) and extort money from him. With two gym members (Johnson and Anthony Mackie) in tow, he goes through with it, and things quickly spiral out of control.

Bay uses the film to satirize the vapid ’90s, with his lecherous camera lingering on many bikini-clad asses and boobs. Yes, we get plenty of Bay slo-mo and, of course, the below-the-chin, looking up 360 degree tracking thing he loves so damned much. The edits are at breakneck speed, and get a little tedious. At more than two hours, the movie is a bit too long, and yet somehow too fast at the same time.

Its saving grace is that much of it is quite funny in an over-the-top, outrageous kind of way. Just the sight of Wahlberg, Johnson and Mackie all swollen with extra muscle pounds put on for the shoot is funny. At one point, Bay gets Wahlberg to strip down to his Calvin Klein white boxer briefs, a nice homage to Wahlberg’s infamous advertising campaign.

As he did with Bad Boys II, Bay celebrates disgusting excess entertainingly, as long as he’s shooting for laughs. No, we don’t get a car chase with corpses spilling out of a truck and getting run over (darn!), but we do get Shalhoub sloppily eating a taco while blindfolded. (This somehow manages to be funny.) We also get dogs with severed toes in their mouths, Rebel Wilson using nunchucks during a sex scene, and a dude getting his head crushed by weights.

Wahlberg is too much fun when he does comedy, always playing it straight during the most outrageous of situations. Johnson plays his part as a big religious hulk who just wants to be a lover but can’t help beat the crap out of every other person he meets. This may be my favorite Johnson performance yet.

Is it sloppy? Yes. Is it way too hyper at times? Yes. Does Michael Bay commit many of the usual cinematic affronts that have made him hated by those of us who sometimes like to watch a movie without having our eyes and ears violated? Oh, hell yes.

But Pain & Gain is OK, and is actually some sort of movie miracle when considering the dumbass who made it. Up next for Bay would be Transformers 4, of course. I’m thinking that film will once again remind us that Bay is a scourge on the land of cinema who only gets it right on the rarest of occasions.