Like a large percentage of Arnold Schwarzenegger's work, this is a film with a strong fantasy/altered reality element to it that works quite well overall, despite at times seeming too beholden to action formulae, rather than being willing to take the fantastic risks it looks like it's going to.  John McTiernan's 1993 LAST ACTION HERO was roundly criticized at the time of its release for being overblown and not delivering the goods that were expected from a $70-90 million (a lot of money at the time) film.  It came in the wake of TERMINATOR II, a hard act to follow certainly, and also just after McTiernan's financially disappointing MEDICINE MAN - but with his big hit THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER still reasonably fresh.  More importantly, the director had gotten his big break with PREDATOR, which was an important step in Arnold's rise to superstardom; this was their first (and to date only) reteaming.  I suppose expectations were higher than any film could deliver, and when the film failed to ignite either critics or the box office (to be fair, it was always in the mighty shadow of JURASSIC PARK), the word "flop" started to get bandied about, and the cynics started to wonder of the star's decade of dominance was coming to an end.