Last Vegas (2013)

Jon Turteltaub's Last Vegas assembles four actors of considerable pedigree and sends them to Sin City for a bachelor party, which is the sort of premise that once would have been called a late-career cash grab and now reads as a demographic calculation. The film wants the Hangover's raunch without the hangover, and it mostly succeeds at being amiably watchable. It does not want to say anything. This is a comedy sanded smooth until no edge remains.

The ensemble is notably integrated, with Morgan Freeman, Michael Ealy, Romany Malco, and a self-deprecating 50 Cent cameo on hand. None of them are there to complicate the story, which concerns the grievances of four men whose whiteness is assumed rather than examined. A troupe of drag queens arrives at the bachelor party as set dressing and departs without a line worth remembering. Mary Steenburgen's Diana is granted one sharp observation about being passed between two men like an heirloom, and the film promptly resumes treating her as the prize. Sam's wife grants him a hall pass, which the movie plays for a laugh.

There is no environmental conscience here, no suspicion of the casino economy that the camera photographs like a tourism advertisement. The swimsuit competition the leads are invited to judge makes a running joke of aging flesh, which is the opposite of any tender regard for bodies. No neurodivergent characters, no reworking of history, no sustained sermon. The men do murmur a few gentle things about grief and growing old, and those murmurs land softly enough. The whole enterprise coasts on charm and the novelty of seeing these particular actors share a frame. It is pleasant. It is also inert. A sommelier would call it a vintage with no terroir, drinkable and instantly forgotten, which is its own kind of achievement in a culture that keeps demanding the wine make a speech.

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