'Pain & Gain' may be my greatest guilty pleasure of all time

I am not a Michael Bay fan or apologist. Beyond his dubious, frequently jingoistic politics, I don't even particularly like his 'good' films -- Bad Boys and The Rock -- which I why I was so disarmed by his underrated 2013 gem Pain & Gain, a movie I can't help but enjoy despite its obvious flaws.

It's frequently been heralded as Bay's best film by cinephiles, which always had me curious -- and it is something to behold. It's as if Bay pushed all of his eccentricities to the max for this one and the studio looked the other way since he has been for better or worse a very profitable filmmaker.

The film purports to be a true story, although subsequent challenges to its veracity have exposed it as a barely that. Still, it is the closest thing to a self-aware satire he has ever made. And while it can also be pig-headed, silly and stupid, I found it endlessly entertaining in a hedonistic sort of way.

In wildly goofy performances, Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and Anthony Mackie play three colossally dumb body builders who get imbued with the spirit of entitlement and try to force an obnoxious but wealthy businessman (a similarly over the top Tony Shaloub) to give them all his money, without much thought about the consequences of follow-through.

That's pretty much the plot, with some divergences here and there, and yet in admittedly overlong 2 hours, the movie just keeps spinning more and more absurdity, it's candy colored cinematography (Bay always, at the very least, makes great looking films) providing endless delight and titillation.

Amid all the chaos, I got to see the first real 'performance' I've ever seen The Rock give. As charming as he is, he almost exclusively plays a flawlessly heroic version of himself. I'm not saying he has tremendous range, but it's fun to see him play someone who comes unglued.

And I've come to understand that I like Wahlberg best in roles where he is not taking himself too seriously or at least undercutting his macho man persona -- so films like The Other Guys, Boogie Nights, Three Kings, and now this, where he is a delivering a tour de force as a supremely stupid person who believes they're very smart.

Clearly, Bay -- or the screenwriters -- want to lampoon the uniquely American belief that people 'deserve' to be rich, or believe they do. Wahlberg's character's awakening as a criminal comes when he is simply implored to be a 'do-er' by a self help guru played by Ken Jeong with glee.

Of course, watching an unlikable, idiotic trio bumble their way through the farthest thing from the perfect crime is not everyone's cup of tea, and Bay has no idea how to craft a subtle joke, there is a lot of lowest common denominator activity in this film, so I can't endorse it with much pride.

I just have to admit that for some reason I was on this movie's wavelength from the beginning, and it has now become, in spite of itself, a true guilty pleasure ofmine.