‘Going In Style’ Review Roundup: Unappealing, Even To Senior Citizens

Going in Style, directed by Zach Braff, is a remake of a 1979 film of the same name. It follows Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin as lifelong buddies who decide to rob a bank for their retirement, instead of relying on their pension funds that are being slashed. While the cast and director are veterans of cinema, this comedy did not fare well to critics. Going in Style garnered just 42% on Rottentomatoes.

GOING IN STYLE REVIEW ROUNDUP

“It’s a clunky, over-the-hill gang escapade enlivened only by the presence of the three Oscar winners, all of whom are so far beyond the movie’s meager demands that to say the actors are overqualified would be the grossest of understatements. Yes, it’s good to see these wonderful actors get together in, well, almost anything, but this broken-down jalopy of a movie is not, to put it charitably, an ideal vehicle.”
–Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor

“Its stars are such pros, they’re so enormously charismatic and have such lovely chemistry with each other, it’s hard not to be charmed by their mere presence on screen. Caine, Freeman and Arkin—Oscar winners, all—know exactly what do to and how much of it to do, both individually and as an ensemble, every time… Going in Style does deserve credit, though, for lacking the kind of wacky jokes that so often make old-man comedies like Last Vegas and Space Cowboys groan-worthy. There are no Viagra gags or bits about incontinence. And these guys aren’t baffled by technology… [Theodore] Melfi mercifully gives these guys their dignity—and when they are the butt of jokes, it’s with affection for the way they bumble through their preparations.”
–Christy Lemire, rogerebert.com

“In the original version of Going in Style, George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg robbed a bank because they were bored. By the end, two had died and one was in prison. And I remember more from it, which I saw when it came out in 1979, than I do from this remake, which I saw last month.”
–Johanna Schneller, The Globe and Mail

“The Going in Style remake is an example of how “likable” prefab filmmaking can shoot itself in the foot. The movie will probably find a modest audience for a weekend or two, but it could have been so much bigger if it didn’t reduce senior citizens to sympathetic data cards. If it truly gave us something to see.”
–Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Article by Hillary Luehring-Jones