INSIDE AND OUT // A FILM REVIEW OF "MAX CLOUD"
There has been many film adaptation of video games and almost all of them strive for the same thing: to make their version more realistic. Make it more grounded. Often, that's why they fail to connect with audiences. MAX CLOUD is a different breed. It wants to embrace the cheesy and clunky bits of 32-bit video games from the 1990's. It wants you to embrace your inner geek and never wants to hide that this is a loud and proud Video Game movie. Set within the real world and the video game world, Martin Owen's high octane adventure feels like a throwback, in all the right ways.
Set in 1990, Sarah (Isabelle Allen) is a nonstop gamer, playing games during every chance she gets. Her father (Sam Hazeldine) wants her to stop playing so many hours of games and eventually grounds her from playing. However, that doesn't stop her and she sneaks back to playing her favorite game "Max Cloud" when she finds an "easter egg" of some sort; a part of the game she's never seen before. Once her character goes there, the Space Witch from inside the game somehow transports her into the game and she becomes the character she's been playing, a young space adventurer named Jake (Elliot James Langridge). Once in the game, she has to fight alongside cocky hero Max Cloud (Scott Adkins) with her real life friend Cowboy (Franz Drameh) controlling her from outside the game. Together, they will have to defeat level after level or Jake's game death may spell an actual death for Sarah.
It's obvious from the very beginning of the film how much love Owen (and co-writer Sally Collett) have for classic video games. The pre-Playstation graphics era was a nostalgic time for many of us (I still remember breathlessly biking over to my friend's house to play the newest Atari game) and MAX CLOUD has a lot of fun with it. The characters strike video game poses, the fights are wonderfully cheesy, the space station feels like it's straight out of an old Star Trek episode and the soundtrack feels like it's from the 90's. Scott Adkins has a ball of a time playing MAX CLOUD, the super macho hero of the video game world. He's shown off his excellent martial arts and stuntman skills in previous films and, though he does more of that here, he also shows a great deadpan comedic range. Both Elliot James Langridge and Isabelle Allen do a good job as our eyes into the world. Allen isn't on screen for very long, since she "becomes" Langridge once she gets inside of the video game, but she sets up the plot well and her voice narration throughout is solid. Langridge does a great job of keeping the action going and often mimicking Allen's own movement. Franz Drameh is also a lot of fun as Cowboy, the hot dog loving gamer friend who's determined to keep his friend alive at all costs.
Not all is positive however, as the film spends very little time building up the rules of this world. How exactly is Sarah sucked into the game and who is the Space Witch? How are Sarah and Cowboy able to communicate throughout? Sadly, we never actually find out any of this. It also would have also been nice to have spent more than five seconds with Sarah in the beginning, so that we could connect with her character even more. That being said, MAX CLOUD is a very silly, fun throwback fun adventure, something we could use more of right about now.
GRADE: B+
WRITTEN BY Sally Collett, Martin Owen DIRECTED BY Martin Owen STARRING Scott Adkins, Elliot James Langridge, Isabelle Allen, Franz Drameh, Sam Hazeldine, John Hannah, Sally Collett. NOW AVAILABLE ON VOD EVERYWHERE. FOR MORE INFO: https://www.wellgousa.com/films/max-cloud