Twisted Metal

Twisted Metal is absurd and hilarious in exactly the ways you want a dystopian Cannonball Run to be. Yes, it matches the games' crude humor but, mostly, it springboards from there and creates its own dark and warped wasteland sensibilities.

Mackie, borrowing some comedic delivery stylings from Eddie Murphy, proves again he’s a welcome lead actor, effortlessly playing the humor while also evincing the anguish of John’s past that’s brought to the fore through flashbacks. .... Sometimes characters from these episodic adventures recur as “Twisted Metal” engages in satisfying world-building.

This is a screen-popping, wickedly funny, seriously twisted and action-jammed adventure that leaves us wanting more. Think “Mad Max” meets “A Clockwork Orange,” with a little bit of the aforementioned “The Last of Us” as well as “The Walking Dead” sprinkled in like so many scoops of lemon pepper.

The show’s plot, especially, is total nonsense, sending Mackie racing across a decent chunk of the country with a ticking clock that never seems to meaningfully tick. There are ideas, images, and jokes worth seeing here, to be sure. But it’s a long trek to get to them.

If “The Last of Us” excels at creeping terror and existential dread, “Twisted Metal” realizes that sometimes the appeal of the post-apocalypse genre lies in the simple pleasure of living vicariously through a likable hero dispensing one-liners while racing across the American wasteland.

Quite decent. Both as colorful and as deep as a shimmering oil slick on a sweltering stretch of abandoned blacktop, Twisted Metal lacks the budget and ingenuity to consistently live up to the game’s sense of unrelenting mayhem. But its limitations make room for a solid character-based story to develop around stars Anthony Mackie and Stephanie Beatriz.

It crashes and burns as an action-comedy, but out of those ashes is an edgy rom-com, and believe it or not, it works. Even the episodic obstacles they face around the backend improve as comedic performers Chloe Fineman and Jason Mantzoukas pop in. They provide unhinged performances that leave you wanting more.

Although its late-stage tie-ins to its source material and cliffhanger ending didn’t do much for me, and I have a general allergy towards its brand of blood-splattered gags, the characterization of these endearing misfits left me eager to see what stretch of road they’d visit next.

The shift to comedy also mostly works, thanks to a great writing staff that includes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick of Zombieland and Deadpool fame, and a team of characters that embrace the weird world they’ve been thrown into. Twisted Metal might be a scrappy little mess at times, but it mostly works when it hits the gas.

Action is well-choreographed, the kills are gnarly, and watching various cars fly around and flip over in dramatic fashion never stops thrilling. In these moments, the show delivers on the high-octane thrills a name like "Twisted Metal" promises — and the finale offers all the chaotic, explosive violence that feels like a video game come to life. It's a shame, then, that the show all-too-regularly bogs itself down in overly familiar plotlines, instead of letting the craziness take over.

It all feels very brash and attention-seeking, like the TV equivalent of a lime-green hatchback doing late-night doughnuts in a supermarket car park. But, if you can tune in to Twisted Metal’s motormouth wavelength of childish exuberance, it is certainly a fun ride.

Fans of the games will be thrilled by Sweet Tooth’s scene-stealing brio, if not the structure of the show’s premise; we have another Mortal Kombat (2021) situation on our hands, an adaptation that serves primarily as a set-up for more to come. But if low-budget and low-brow bloodletting is your thing, there are far worse roads to travel.

Twisted Metal – a Peacock series spun out of the PlayStation game – manages to start with a rush of zany energy courtesy of the writers behind “Deadpool,” before hitting potholes as it becomes too over-the-top to justify the ride.

There might have even been a better version of this show that wasn’t scared to really center Stu as the lead, a normal guy in a sea of abnormal weirdos. In that version, the writers wouldn’t have been so tied to a protagonist like John who thinks he’s charming but is really just bland. And it could have allowed other supporting players from the series to pop in and out. Instead, we’re stuck in a car with John and Quiet, wondering when this road trip is going to end.

Like so many modern streaming shows, Twisted Metal feels like it would work way better as a movie than a miniseries. Tricky as this tonal balance is, it's a lot easier to maintain for two hours than 10.

Twisted Metal is noisy and violent, with some decent performances, but that’s about it.

Its general mode of operating is to put in whatever seems cool and fun and silly and sick and leave out anything that does not meet those parameters. Yes to: guns, cars, sardonic needle drops, wisecracks, blood, sex, flash, grime, the sound of tires on pavement, shit that looks dope. No to: quietness, finicky world-building, thinking too hard about the limitations of the human body, complex motivations, depth, taking stuff too seriously, man.

It’s shallow enough to feel disingenuous, and the flatness of the characters doesn’t help. A horrific, ’80s-set origin story for Sweet Tooth becomes just another excuse for gratuitous gore.

“Twisted Metal” is not flawed because it’s a game adaptation. Its flaws still speak to why “The Last of Us” was an exception to an otherwise ironclad rule, and how copying that show’s playbook is not a surefire formula for success. The story of “Twisted Metal” is thin and packed with tropes.

An aggressively unfunny adaptation of a one-dimensional decades-old PlayStation franchise that few still care about, Peacock’s R-rated action-comedy breaks down from the start and never recovers.