Last Action Hero

The Cast:
Jack Slate-Arnold Schwarzenegger
Danny Madigan-Austin O'Brien
Benedict-Charles Dance
Art Carney- Frank Slater
Vivaldi-Anthony Quinn
John Practice-F. Murray Abraham
Whitney-Bridgette Wilson
Irene Madigan-Mercedes Ruehl
Death-Ian Fucking McKellan

The Plot
    Danny Madigan is a kid who lives in the totally real and fairly shitty world and has an unhealthy obsession with his favorite action hero Jack Slater, and a totally unquestioned relationship with an elderly projectionist in an irrationally large soon to be abandoned theater.  The theater is scheduled to close but not before it is given the responsibility to run quality control and the film print for the premier of the new Jack Slater movie.  Danny, after being victimized by a home invasion, is offered the chance to view this midnight review by his projectionist friend Nick and opts to do that instead of heading home to his worried mother (he is very single minded). 
    Because they needed a plot device and Nick lacks a final will and testament, Danny is given a ticket Nick received from Houdini that is reportedly magic.  Danny gets sucked into the movie and tries desperately to prove that Jack lives in an action movie.  Meanwhile the chief henchmen of Jack Slater  IV, Benedict, starts to realize something weird is going on with the random preteen that is Jacks new partner and gets his hands on the magic ticket and escapes into the real world. 
    Danny and Jack follow and Jack faces the same existential dread that all the rest of us have just gotten used too, while Benedict realizes he likes a world where murders go unsolved and heroes can be shot. It all comes to a head at the premier for Jack Slater.  In a rain soaked climax, Jack and Danny face off against Benedict and another of of Jacks nemeses and Jack nearly dies.  Enter Oscar winner Ian McKellen as Ingmar Bergmans Death, to Deathus ex Machina a solution and everyone lives happily ever after. 

The Experience
    I remembered liking this movie.  I saw it in a decaying old theater not terribly dissimilar to the one in the movie  and had vague recollections of some of the gags.  So I recently rewatched it (which is why I'm bothering to write about it now) and this movie is a blast.  Arnold Schwarzenegger has always had a flair for action comedy and this is him at the top of his game.  Austin O'Brien starts off painfully irritating but once he's in the world of the movie he takes on a role you don't see a lot from kid side kicks, he ends up basically the straight man, relentlessly driving Jack from plot point to plot point and fully aware that he is doing so. 
    Charles Dance is a delight as Benedict, who is well portrayed as the smartest man in a movie full of idiotic tropes.  His disdain for the foolishness around him and glee at the ability to just be a bad guy without having some hyper masculine hero after him provides the great villain that every worthwhile action movie needs. 
    This movie was meta before meta was a thing, and plays both sides of the issue.  Jacks police station looks like the interior of a mall and is filled with movie cops from every iteration of the cop movie genre, right now to an animated, misogynistic cat detective and whenever the ludicrousness is pointed out Slater misses the point because it's all so damn normal to him.  Then in the real world he, for the first time in his life, has a conversation with a woman and is amazed at how pleasant it is.  Because of course as an action hero he would never have just stopped and talked to a woman.  Then playing the existence of actors against the existence of their characters (including a prescient unhappy relationship between Schwarzenegger and then wife Maria Shriver) produces a consistently entertaining film.