There be spoilers herein.

Mrs. P. and I watched it last night, and I swear I don’t know how this has a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Now I am an Air Force Brat, so I do like me a movie with jets and flying and stuff, but this movie was so very formulaic it was funny. We were both predicting scenes as they started. I even suggested lines of dialog seconds before they happen that Mrs. P. asked if I had seen it before.

Sure, the flight scenes are fun. But I thought the characters were flat and all Tom Cruise did was smirk and ride a motorcycle. I’ve only seen the original once – and that was a long time ago – so I didn’t catch all the intended back story emotional hooks.

Look, I don’t like Tom Cruise as a human. Because Scientol0gy. But I admire him as an actor. Several of his movies are really good. But in this all I saw was Tom. Totally unbelievable as the character.

The movie did all it could to pull me in emotionally, which, to be honest, is quite easy to do, but this one failed. I didn’t cry when the script wanted me to. Nor laugh. Nothing. Okay, we laughed, but not with; we laughed at the script.

Oh, and the militaristic jingoism is just off the charts. Huge flags, emblems everywhere… There’s the required beach football game where everyone is half naked. Maverick the reluctant teacher who knows better than everyone. The love interest with the daughter and the puppy who teaches him that he may know how to fly but knows shit about sailing. Stealing an old fighter plane that fires right up with no support crew. And, somehow, he ejects from a scramjet fighter going Mach 10. His commanding officers dressing him down for crashing a plane then giving him his next, vitally crucial mission. The old wingman covering his backside until his predictable death.

Count me in with the 5% that didn’t like this movie.