Who's In It: Gerard Butler, Amber Valletta, Michael C. Hall, Kyra Sedgwick, Logan Lerman, Alison Lohman, Ludacris, Aaron Yoo, John Leguizamo, Milo Ventimiglia
The Basics: In the future when the world is even worse, you will be so broke, falsely imprisoned or bored from all the techno-malaise enveloping the planet that you'll voluntarily submit to being placed in a video game where your mind is controlled by outside players. Depending on the game you sell your soul to, you'll either kill/be killed or you'll dress up like The Lady Miss Kier from Deee-Lite and prance around as a human sex toy. It'll be like Rollerball but with hot-pink wigs.
What's The Deal: I left out the part about how Gerard Butler has to overcome impossible obstacles and murder tons of brutish lugs in order to reunite with his mind-napped wife Amber Valleta and actual-napped kid. That's because aside from the fun brutality of that scenario, this movie is just a big dumb mess. It's like the creators (who are responsible for the Crank movies, so you really do expect a lot more insanity than you get) decided they wanted to be taken seriously for a minute and tried to replicate actual human emotions on screen. That is a big mistake on their part.
Who's Insufferable: Dexter's Michael C. Hall as the omnipotent designer of the Sims-ish population-controlling games. He lip-syncs to Sammy Davis, Jr., he bugs out his eyes, he appears to have been intentionally Botoxed for the role to make his face look as tight as Kyra Sedgwick's and he employs a wacky Southern hick accent so that he comes off as a cross between a Bond villain and a character on Squidbillies.
What It Wants (And Fails) To Be: Dirty and depraved. To that end there's a lot of quick-cutting and the suggestion of people humping in various disco-lighted combinations. Milo Ventimiglia even shows up dressed in head-to-toe latex as someone named "Rick Rape." But it's a lot of heaving and grinding with no cool payoff at all. In fact, the movie seems most sexually fixated on an enormous, greasy, sweaty fat gamer guy who controls Amber Valleta's every buttock movement and spends his time dunking waffles into a bowl of syrup.
Will Make You Hungry For: Crank 3