Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Rookies’ on VOD, a Hyperbolic Chinese Action-Comedy Featuring Milla Jovovich in the Rent-a-Star Role

The Rookies hits VOD in the USA with a WTF and trying to inspire some OMGs and LMFAOs. The Chinese action-comedy with Milla Jovovich in the rent-a-star role — read: big on the poster, less big in the actual movie — was a box office flop in its native country, and now squeaks into the on-demand market on a wing and a prayer, hoping to find a cult following. Because cross over it’s unlikely to do, considering it’s live-action Looney Tunes, and as over-the-top Hong Kongy as a comedy can possibly get. Limited appeal obviously doesn’t mean a movie isn’t worth the ones and zeroes required to stream it though, so let’s see if it stirs up a laugh or three.

THE ROOKIES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: WOUNDED BILLIONAIRE BECOMES HERMIT screams a headline, although better ones would read WOUNDED BILLIONAIRE KEEPS DEAD GIRLFRIEND’S EYEBALL IN A JAR or WOUNDED BILLIONAIRE SEEKS TO TURN POPULACE INTO PLANTS. Both are true. Wow, right? Gadzooks, I say. This wounded billionaire is a psycho known as Iron Fist (David Lee McInnis), and the latter headline is indeed his nefarious plan — to unleash a toxic gas that’ll put everyone in a permanent, literally vegetative state. Please don’t ask why, because 1) that seems like a poisoned rabbit hole to climb down, and 2) I don’t know why because this movie makes less sense than the contents of Daffy Duck’s skull. Anyway, this Iron Fist guy — suddenly, all of James Bond’s nemeses seem so irredeemably boring, don’t they?

Meanwhile, Miao Yan (Sandrine Pinna) is a flunky at Interpol’s Hong Kong office, in a position so lowly it’s even below that of the PR department rimshot and that’s not even my joke it’s the movie’s! She sits bored at her screen, watching social media daredevil Zhao Feng (Wang Talu) do crazy parkour and shit. He scales to the top of a really tall building and all the likes and comments manifest in the movie as a bunch of floating, jabbering animated spheres that trail him like fart clouds. He parachutes down and ends up smashing through a high-rise window and landing smack in the middle of a meeting between some heavies who are exchanging one briefcase for another briefcase, and I doubt they’re swapping Pokemon cards. The meeting’s busted up by Bruce (Jovovich), an international secret agent who shows her utter incompetence by thinking Zhao is competent as a spy and a human being (he still lives at home with his mom and his best friend is a sex doll), and recruiting him for a team assembled to stop Iron Fist from making the entire world his kumquat garden or whatever.

Zhao’s teammates are Miao, LV (Liu Meitong) and Shan (Xu Weizhou), and one of the first things they have to do is dress up as a Kiss ripoff band to infiltrate a rich Hungarian’s mansion party and steal the actual Holy Grail. What does this have to do with Iron Fist’s evil intentions? Haven’t the foggiest. But the moron squad will get to him eventually. Did I mention I feel like an idiot for existing in the same world as this movie? Well, I feel like an idiot for existing in the same world as this movie.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Rookies is like Mission: Impossible or a Bond outing if it was conceived and executed by eight-year-olds high on Lik-M-Aid Fun Dip. It’s also like xXx but with significant water on the brain, which is really saying something, because that movie has plenty of slosh in its skull.

Performance Worth Watching: All I will say about Jovovich’s performance — before her character is rendered paralytic and only able to blink ha ha ha comedy — is that her hair and wardrobe make her look like David Bowie.

Memorable Dialogue: “Please don’t ask me why I’m suddenly in Budapest.” — Zhao can’t figure out what’s going on here, either.

Sex and Skin: None, possibly because cartoon characters aren’t anatomically correct.

Our Take: The Rookies makes hyperbole look like understatement. It’s indescribably annoying, the absolute max of maximalism — color, movement, pace, tone. It never slows down, even in the moments that aren’t action sequences, because it’s edited like several hyperkinetic paroxysms occurring simultaneously. Watching it is like eating candy for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day until the sugar has no effect and all pleasure is leached out of the experience. The only element of the movie that isn’t comparable to jamming your cerebrum into the Insinkerator is the writing; there are no characters, motives or dialogue worth mentioning, only action sequences roughly stapled together sans the connective tissue that might render the story something other than unmitigated nonsense.

I have some questions. Is the movie set in the future? Is it even set on the planet Earth? Why does it look like an exploding circus? Does anyone find sex doll gags funny? Would the movie have been better as anime? Why so much bad CGI? Because it’s cheap? Turn everyone into plants? Really? Plants? Would the action, which at least exists in the same ballpark as creativity, have been enjoyable if it wasn’t sliced into thousands of fragments of shots? Is the movie preferable to having someone scream directly into your face for two hours? I can answer that last one: No, it’s not.

Our Call: SKIP IT. If exaggeration was a terminal illness, The Rookies would be dead 100 times over.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Where to stream The Rookies