Duke (Morgan Freeman) went into witness safety after his testimony put a made man in jail, and now he has a superb factor going because the resident supervisor of a Southern California “luxury resort community” known as Villa Capri. But when Leo (Tommy Lee Jones) strikes in, Duke’s rule of the roost is challenged. Suzie (Rene Russo), Duke’s company boss, is on the town to evaluation his operation as the vacations method as nicely, and an undesirable visitor arrives within the type of the made man’s son, who plots to kill Duke as payback for his father’s incarceration.

While it’s true Just Getting Started options Morgan Freeman and Tommy Lee Jones, the main man is a shock newcomer. He has rugged attractiveness. He is an accommodating host to 3 women directly. Clouds of mud rise in his wake as he rides off with a rescued canine. He is…the Ford F-150. As you watch Leo and Duke discover lame excuses to climb out and in of this good-looking automobile again and again, you could wrestle a bit of with the precise hue of its purple paint job. Candy Apple? Fire Engine? Ah ha! Of course, Ruby Red! As Leo tells Duke, the truck is his “brand-new, four-wheel-drive, extended-cab F-150 in Ruby Red.” Which is tremendous useful for these of you who might need to cease by your native Ford seller on the way in which house, ought to its purely incidental appearances on this film have piqued your curiosity. There is one scene the place we see the truck aggressively maneuver off-road in so gratuitous a trend that it resembles the hoary clichés of a automobile business. One begins to wonder if the advertising group at Ford wrote the script—that will clarify its utter deadness as nicely. Everything that ought to be proven on this film is instructed, and every little thing that’s proven can be higher left unseen.

Sometimes, it’s much less helpful to ask whether or not a movie is “good” than to ask who it’s for. And it’s additionally true that not each Hollywood film has Oscar aspirations. However, one shudders to assume that there exists someplace a gaggle of people that would relate to or get pleasure from Just Getting Started, because it doesn’t appear to be pursuing even the form of noble mediocrity we’re inclined to sometimes forgive. Even viewers who hunt down in each movie no less than a redeeming efficiency or a standout ingredient will discover no respite right here. Just Getting Started isn’t madcap or humorous or endearing; hell, it’s not even “cute.” It is, as Suzie says of Villa Capri itself, “madness. It’s all madness.”