Recently Mark Hamill said in relation to Star Wars: "remember folks, it doesn't matter if it's good, only if it makes money."

Of course he wasn't talking about Rampage, but he may as well have been.

For those that are not old enough, the entire premise for this movie is based on rather popular but stupid video game from the 80's where you could play as a mutated ape, lizard type thing, or wolf; and proceed to try to rip cities apart.

It makes me wonder what goes on in these Hollywood offices when they greenlight these things. Have they simply run out of ideas? Apparently they approved a $120 million budget for it which eventually became more than a quarter billion after advertising campaigns were factored in. So I suppose there are a lot of people out there that are happy that audiences don't really require a story of any sort because this movie ended up taking in nearly $500 million.

The "plot" goes like this: The Rock is a primatologist (I had to look that word up) who has built a lifelong relationship with an gorilla named George. He and George are able to communicate via sign language and to be fair, although the relationship is completely ridiculous when compared to people that actually do this for a living, it is touching.

So some stuff falls from space and whatever animal it comes in contact with grows at an exponential rate and George just happens to be one of the lucky recipients. There is also a wolf and, i guess a crocodile that get mutated by the same space stuff.

All 3 mutant beasties are enraged and drawn to Chicago by a radio signal that has been amplified at the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago. This is because some evil company that is responsible for the mutations in the first place has devised some method of how this mayhem is going to manifest into big profits somehow - i think it was explained in the movie but I had lost interest at that point.

Conventional weaponry is completely useless on them of course because you know, missiles and miniguns on Apache helicopters that are designed to shoot through cement and steel, have no affect at all on animals mutated by space dust. It is good to know though, that once the Rock has some small arms and grenades, he is able to do some damage that the entire US military couldn't figure out (it's all about placement!)

I will say this: the CGI in this movie is very well done, but this doesn't even begin to compensate for the fact that the story is just dumb. I don't like this sort of cinema but if you are into the huge budget, predictable, paper-thin storyline films with lots of explosions. This might be for you.

5 / 10