Writer / director James Cameron gets a little silly in this intrinsically ‘90s fix of macho action and domestic fibbage. Arnold Schwarzenegger, perhaps a hair past his winking, flexing, cheesing prime, plays a cocksure American spy who balances international wetwork with a simple suburban family life. Wielding the cookie sheets back at home, Jamie Lee Curtis is his repressed wife; craving a little excitement in her middle age and getting in way over her head. Tom Arnold works a support role as the big man’s smarmy, sarcastic sidekick, while Bill Paxton makes hay with a throwaway part as the weaselly used car salesman who keeps turning up in the wrong places.

It’s never really played straight, so some leeway is obviously in order, but damn, this is big and loud and crude and stupid. Like, *really* stupid. Picture Michael Bay directing a James Bond flick. _True Lies_ has zero nuance and negative chill. Even if I hadn’t seen this a thousand times back in the day (as, I’d imagine, did anyone with an HBO subscription in 1996), I could’ve predicted every telegraphed plot swerve, miles away. The memorable parts still play - Arnold in a harrier jet, buzzing the skyline of downtown Miami; the boys’ plot to catch a cheating spouse in the act; Jamie Lee’s sizzling striptease - but all the points in-between are embarrassingly bad. The humor, blunt and heavy-handed, rarely hits for more than eye rolls and raspberries, and it’s all a little too detached from reality, even for a loose comedy. Nobody seems too worried about the nuclear blast that effectively severs the Florida Keys from US soil, for instance. Instead, the explosion is played for laughs (the estranged couple reunites for a kiss against the mushroom cloud backdrop) and then hand-waved away as we race to rescue their kidnapped daughter.

At the time it was released, this probably felt a tad excessive but not completely out of the ballpark. Nowadays, well... if _The Fast and the Furious_ is your thing, it’s going to hit right in the heart of your wheelhouse. Needless to say, that ain’t me.