'Fate of the Furious' quickens your pulse, but tries your patience

Charlize Theron and Vin Diesel in The Fate of the Furious

The Fast & Furious franchise is a truly fascinating commercial phenomenon to me. Clearly, there are plenty of moviegoers who earnestly enjoy these movies at face value without hesitation, and there are viewers like me (and the folks at How Did This Get Made?) who have become enamored by their sheer absurdity and who have grown to embrace everything that is inherently terrible about them.

The last few entries have actually flirted with critical acclaim, and from an action perspective this new film, like most of its predecessors, really does deliver bang for your buck. There are some spectacular set pieces in this one -- including an elaborate chase set in New York City where driverless cars are being launched at our team of heroes.

Let's excuse the fact that the whole scene and scheme motivating it makes next to no sense. It's effective. What isn't effective? A lot.

I mean Vin Diesel tries mightily to act in this entry, and he's given a lot to do -- since the plot of this one forces him to collude with the villain (a campy, unblinking Charlize Theron with godawful hair) for convoluted circumstances. But he continues to mutter in his annoying monotone about family.

MVP of the Furious franchise

Meanwhile, Ludacris and Tyrese's bickering is getting really tiresome, and is their friendly feuding over the gorgeous but bland tech sidekick Nathalie Emmanuel is also a drag. Characters are always spouting meaningless techno mumbo jumbo, while inexplicably being able to communicate calmly to each other while driving amid mayhem and nearly all their behavior always defy reason and gravity.

But with action this consistently entertaining you mostly forgive it, mostly. Certainly, every time Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and Jason Statham show up on screen a smile came to my face. Not only are they very credible and charismatic in fight scenes, they are damn funny together and the rumored spin-off with their characters already has me psyched.

Those two capture what this series does best, a sort of winking self-awareness. This movie is like a McDonald's fast food meal. You know it isn't good for you, it's not something you want to make a habit out of, but every once and a while it really hits the spot.

Still, this series is eight movies in and some of their tropes -- the endless additions of new characters, the sanctimonious speeches on family, the sudden resurrections of supposedly dead characters, gratuitous shots of underbutt,  the co-opting of former villains into the hero fold -- are getting really cliched and too silly to support.

To use an awful pun, I'm not too sure this series has that much gas left in it. I spent a lot more time groaning during this one than I did during the seventh film, which had an element of pathos because of the death of series regular Paul Walker prior to the movie's release.

Without that gravitas, this one feels like a little bit of retread, while there is something endearing to me about its big, loud stupidity, there's nothing resonant about it either.