What happens when you put one of the best action hero actors together with one of the best action directors to make an action movie parody? You get this decidedly uneven, absurd kind of film that tries to have its cake and eat it. Arnie stars as Jack Slater in the film within a film. But in the film, Jack Slater is played by the movie version of Arnie…A boys gets a magic ticket, falls into Jack Slater IV, the bad guy gets hold of the magic ticket and both the young boy and Slater fall back into the real world. And that’s just the main plot of Last Action Hero, a film that includes many, many, ridiculous side plots.

death last action hero seventh seal — Hey, it is Death from The Seventh Seal!

Several buddy cop comedy ideas occur in the background. The T-1000 cameos in Jack Slater IV (yes, the character, not the actor Robert Patrick!). Death from ‘The Seventh Seal’ appears at the end. As is common nowadays (so ‘Last Action Hero’ was ahead of its time in some ways…), clichés are both mocked and indulged in. Although it’s a mess of a film, with no defined rules, it reaches a particular level of absurdity where the viewer simply has to go along with the ride and accept it. ‘Last Action Hero’ is a parody that never quite nails the action genre or the parody and constantly commentates on what it parodies. But it reaches heights of silliness and packs enough laughs that I’d say it is a ‘must-watch.’ Maybe a remake/reboot would do the concept justice…