Last Action Hero (1993) review

Young movie-goer Danny (Austin O'Brien) - who lives with his widowed mother Irene (Mercedes Ruehl) - skips school (boo!) to watch (and re-watch) the blockbusters starring Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and is one day handed a magical ticket by projectionist Nick (Robert Prosky) that teleports him into one of Slater's pictures.  It's trying to be a jokey satire of the big-budget explosion bonanza that Governor Arnie has been known for, but the problem is that its idea of "comedy" is way off, and ironically it more or less "becomes" the very thing it's trying to mock (with the big set pieces and the shootouts in the rain, etc.).  It's all overdone and self-aware and filled with cameos (MC Hammer, Angie Everhart, Robert Patrick, Danny DeVito as an animated cat), although I can't be too sour about the ending in which Death (Sir Ian McKellen!) gets yanked out of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal and walks the streets of Manhattan.  If the rest of the script was that inventive, this may not have been such a bomb.