Rampage the video game couldn’t be more mindless. You take control of a mutated gorilla, wolf, or lizard and run around destroying things and eating people until your health bar runs out. That’s it. Pure mindless destruction. And I enjoyed playing it immensely.

I remember seeing the trailer for Rampage the movie for the first time. It started out looking like just another stupid Dwayne Johnson movie. Then the gorilla started wrecking things. When the wolf showed up, it began to dawn on me. “No, it couldn’t be” I thought to myself. But gradually it looked more and more like someone had actually made a movie out of one of the most simpleminded video games ever. Literally 2 seconds after I thought “Where’s Lizzie?” the giant alligator appeared.

That’s a big alligator. IMDb.com

I smelled a train wreck, and I walked into the theater feeling a tingly mixture of excited anticipation and dread, but I found myself liking this movie a lot more than I ever expected to.

Rampage turned out to be a fun throwback to the rubber-suited Godzilla movies of old. Many tried and true tropes are there. Military weapons are all but useless, for example. But despite all the odds, there’s a reasonably compelling story. There are plausible reasons why three gigantic monsters are trashing Chicago, and I found myself caring what happened to the heroes.

Much of the credit goes to Dwayne Johnson and the animators. I’ve never considered Johnson a great actor, but he managed to have real chemistry with George the CGI gorilla. And George, in turn, showed a wide range of believable emotion. He seemed truly alive.

Dwayne and George. IMDb.com

Sadly, the same cannot be said for Malin Akerman and Jake Lacy. As the villains, they were two-dimensional and more cartoonish than the CGI surrounding them. It does not speak well for your acting ability when Dwayne Johnson and a computer-generated gorilla act circles around you.

I don’t want to give the impression that Rampage is too serious. It’s not. It’s a comedy more than anything. And true to it’s video game roots, the film delivers destruction on an epic scale.

Some of Chicago is still left. IMDb.com

Overall, Rampage delivered more and better story than I expected, didn’t insult me, got me to care about the heroes, made me laugh, and gave me a couple hours of silly fun.

Overall rating: 7/10