(from left) Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and Danny Sharp (Jake Gyllenhaal) in Ambulance, directed by Michael Bay. CHICAGO - In the stupidest "wow, what a coincidence" moment in cinema since Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent realized their mothers have the same name, Michael Bay would really like to blow your mind with the fact that you can’t spell "ambulance" without LA.
Did you know that LA is also a place more formally known as Los Angeles? And that this movie is set there? Don’t worry — if you forget, Bay will remind you. "Stupid," in this case, is both a complaint and a compliment. "Ambulance" — sorry, "AmbuLAnce" — is a patently absurd feast of spectacle and camp, a bifurcated mess that can’t decide what kind of movie it wants to be and so chooses instead to be several movies at once.
None of those movies are good, exactly, but none of them are boring either, and thrown together this way, they fuse into a Frankenstein’s monster of explosions and nonsense, pathos and plot holes.
Yet in spite of (or perhaps because of) its myriad flaws, it’s impossible to resist the film’s siren song. That’s probably because there are so many sirens in it, but it’s true all the same.