#220: Road Hard

March 11, 2015

220

Adam and Dr, Drew reunite and open the show discussing Adam’s trip through New York, DC, Minneapolis and Chicago debuting his new movie Road Hard. Adam and Drew also discuss the initial reaction and how there seems to be a wild disparity between the reactions of audiences and critics. Plus, they answer some listener calls. Superfan Sidebar >>

NoPurpleFlavorAid

Long dissertation about critics writing negative reviews about Road Hard. Zero mention of how much hate butter was spread on Clint Eastwood and American Sniper after box office demolition. By the way, Eastwood’s been collecting Social Security checks for 20 years now. So fv¢k your 18-25 demo, you ivory tower ass clowns.
- Steve Esposito
  
  What does “American Sniper” have to do with this?
Doug Nienhuis

Nothing Adam says here rings true. He’s claiming that the critics panned “Road Hard” because they don’t like Adam Carolla as a person. I don’t think it’s that complicated. I think they panned “Road Hard” for the simple reason that it’s a really horrible movie. It’s painfully bad, like punch to the stomach bad.

Ironically, I think it’s the audience that’s guilty of the bias that Adam ascribes to the critics. They say they like the movie, but what they are really saying is that they like Adam. Their positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes are simply votes for Adam, not for the movie.

Think about it. If critics are so biased against Adam and his politics, why did they like “The Hammer”? I can tell you why. It’s because “The Hammer” is a pretty good movie. Why didn’t they like “Road Hard”? Because it’s a pretty bad one. You don’t have to go looking for a big conspiracy theory here.

Adam should take his 47% Rotten Tomatoes rating and be happy with it. I think he was really lucky to get even that. The reviews from The Philadelphia Enquirer, Variety and the San Francisco Chronicle are listed as Fresh, but I have no idea why. They’re quite negative about the movie overall and should have been listed as Rotten. Some other Fresh reviews (the ones from Common Sense Video and the Tribune News Service) are lukewarm at best, damning with faint praise. The only three genuinely positive reviews are from Hollywood in Toto, Richard Roeper, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

With only three genuinely positive reviews out of seventeen, “Road Hard” could easily have ended up with an 18% Rotten Tomatoes rating. I could speculate with my own conspiracy theory here and wonder if a good friend of the Adam Carolla Show, “schlubby guy” Matt Atchity, had a quiet word with his staff to err on the positive side for this one. Probably not, but it’s fun to ponder. With only seventeen reviews overall, it wouldn’t have been hard to nudge the results.
The Borderline

This podcast was interesting to me. I’m not a professional movie reviewer, but I did review “Road Hard” on examiner.com. I didn’t read any other reviews or listen to this podcast prior to writing it. When Adam said that a critic didn’t like his acting because it was too stilted, I actually had the opposite reaction to that. I also noticed that he sometimes came off as awkward and stilted in the movie. I thought it was on purpose, because the character he is playing is supposed to be depressed. I assumed that’s why he comes off as insecure and uncomfortable in a lot of scenes. I scratched my head at first, but then I took into account that the character has a lot of crap going on in his life, and I figured his behavior was supposed to be telling us how the character feels even when there isn’t any dialogue explicitly telling us.

I’m curious what Adam has to say about it. Was the “stilted” acting intentional or unintentional?
Steve Esposito

I really enjoyed Road Hard. Am a big Carolla fan, but my enjoyment of the movie was a surprise. Perhaps I was biased by the trailers, which do the movie no justice at all.

The comment here that called Carolla’s performance “stilted,” well I did not see it that way. That was something else I expected from the trailers, but happily it did not show up in the larger context.

The Carolla movie I did not get into was “The Hammer.” I got all the way up to the belt sander gag before bailing. THAT movie opened, to me anyway, as an Adam Sandler clone. After seeing “Road Hard” I might go back for a second look at “Hammer.” BTW, the RT audience ratings are up in the mid 80s now. Amazon has 210 five star ratings.
wahooo

When the caller who talked about going back to church I think that the guys misinterpreted his intentions. I think he was talking about a sense of community rather than faith per se.