LAST ACTION HERO: MONEY TALKS
named Jack Practice, is identified by Danny as dirty because the actor played Salieri in AMADEUS). And the movie within a movie, while the purpose of the movie, goes on too long. It'd be better, I think, if more of the movie was about Jack being in the real world.
And in the real world, things aren't focused either. The climax is at a movie theater, which gives Schwarzenegger's real-life wife Maria Shriver a chance to dig her husband about his Hummer, but mostly has pointless cameos by the likes of James Belushi. There is a great moment when Benedict (played well by Dance) kills someone and realizes in the "real world" - or at least in New York City - no one cares. More could have been done with that, and the movie within a movie could have been tighter, and the film would have been more successful.
Still, this is far from the catastrophe critics called it. As I said, much of the criticism came from its budget (it was the then-high figure of $60 million, and the film didn't make that much back in its first run), and from the idea of having Ah-nold's brand of violence in a PG-13 movie. But I think what really drove some critics crazy was Schwarzenegger, with the help of McTiernan, were biting the hand that fed them.
Starting with THE TERMINATOR, Schwarzenegger became a huge action star, with every film he did doing blockbuster business, or close to, especially overseas (which is where most action movies, regardless of how they play here, do their business, which is one reason why we get flooded with them). And McTiernan, though he had taken a left turn into a more grown-up action movie (THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER) and an adventure/drama (MEDICINE MAN) was still best known for his action movies. And even though McTiernan had shown a satiric element in DIE HARD (having the villain (Alan Rickman) demand the relase of certain terrorists because "I read about them in Time magazine"), and Schwarzenegger has always had a sense of self-mocking about him (in promoting TOTAL RECALL, he joked the stunt doubles were actually for his love scenes), no one seemed to remember that. What they saw was McTiernan and Schwarzenegger saying the whole foundation they had made their careers on was, essentially, ridiculous. And this wasn't in the AIRPLANE! style of homage, either (having been done unsuccessfully
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