The Fate of the Furious

With The Fate of the Furious, easily the most stupidly titled installment in the Furious franchise—yes, even more stupid than the name Tokyo Drift—you get to see the single most disgusting, stomach-churning, horrifying moment in cinema so far this year. That would be when Charlize Theron plants a big, sloppy kiss on Vin Diesel, the image of which is some kind of “Woman from Monster Meets the Pillsbury Dough Boy On Steroids” nightmare. Some five years ago, I made up a list of five things I never wanted to see, and that came in at number three, right under “Donald Trump as President” and “Spiders in My Scrambled Eggs Being Served to Me By a Man with Weeping Hand Sores.” Somewhere along the way, the  Furious franchise went completely bonkers and became less about cars racing around and more about dudes who think hair on the top of their heads is total bullshit, and also think upper arms should be the size of a bull’s torso. It also went off on some sort of international spy team tangent, something that worked to a hilarious degree in Furious 7. In The Fate of the Furious, the franchise trajectory becomes ridiculous without being much fun. It’s just dumb and plodding.