With F9, the Fast and Furious franchise shows it still knows how to entertain. But it has never pulled more from the Looney Tunes playbook.
Every Fast and Furious movie strains credulity, but F9 shatters it so completely, even the production’s own characters have noticed. In the ninth main installment of one of Universal’s most durable film franchises, Dominic Toretto (played by Vin Diesel) and his trusty band of drag-racing ex-cons are so indestructible that they ride out bullets, land mines, and the void of outer space. (I repeat: Outer. Space.) No wonder the crew member Roman (Tyrese Gibson) starts questioning whether they’re immortal. “We are not normal,” he asserts at one point, holding up his bullet-hole-ridden shirt as evidence. He’s not wrong to be perturbed: F9 ’s ludicrously choreographed set pieces cement the Fast franchise as a full-blown farce. The unhinged action scenes aren’t just outrageous; they set up punch lines. Early in the film, Roman’s first near-death experience—his car appears to squash him—is played for laughs. One of the car chases—arguably the nuts and bolts of a franchise about speedy, angry vehicles—hinges on a character’s comic inability to drive. And just watch the way the characters move through the Fast -verse now: Dom and his teammates careen through the air, bounce across the tops of cars, and recover from crashes like Wile E. Coyote. After nine films, one spin-off, and two decades upping the ante on physics-defying stunts, perhaps it’s only natural that the Fast saga is beginning to resemble Looney Tunes in its embrace of physical comedy. Sure, the Fast films have always been a little silly—would there have been a sequel called 2 Fast 2 Furious if they weren’t?—but this is the one during which I’ve laughed most consistently.
