My Double-Feature Failure

This weekend I had a weekend double-feature. Disappointment starring Jessica Alba and Disappointing Remake starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig (I always wanted two first names. I think it would make me sound cooler). Okay so maybe that’s not what the movies were called, but the titles seem to really fit.

My first major disappointment came early Saturday afternoon. I convinced myself to see The Eye starring Jessica Alba and a few other folks who could easily be replaced. This film is a remake of the Hong Kong hit “Jian Gui”. In the movie Alba plays Sydney Wells, a blind violinist who has been without sight since the age of five. She undergoes an eye transplant that restores her vision and also allows her to see supernatural things. Of course nobody believes her. It was as if people thought “You mean to tell me you’ve been blind all these years and NOW you are suddenly and expert on what you see.” That line would have added some much needed comedy to this movie.

The low point of the film comes when Sydney goes to her psychiatrist Dr. Paul Faulkner played horribly by Allessandro Nivola. She says “I need to find out who’s eyes these are” and he replies “I can’t. I could lose my license.” Not only did I see this line coming from a mile away. It was at that exact point when my stomach started to hurt. I realized this movie wasn’t going to be any good, and there is an 85% chance it’s going to end with me throwing my $4.00 Cherry Coke at the screen.

The high point of the movie has to be Jessica Alba. Not because she’s the movies “eye candy” but she actually does a decent job as a lead in this film. I do worry about her career. She’s dropped two bricks with The Eye and Good Luck Chuck. Hopefully she can rebound from this debacle.

It was almost like the producers didn’t care about the movie. I could see them saying in post-production meetings, “It has Jessica Alba! Guys 15-30 will go see it. We’ll make a ton of money”. Sadly, not even her beautiful looks could save this sinking ship.

So after my disappointing morning I decided to watch The Invasion. Here’s the back-story: I love Invasion of the Body Snatchers. So what if it’s film as old as I am, it is still one of my all-time favorite movies. Mostly because I thought they ended the movie perfect. It really shook me up as a kid. I was afraid to go to sleep. I didn’t want any plants in my room under any circumstances. Seeing that I loved the original, like Kidman and have grown to like Daniel Craig, how could this movie suck? It’s easy. How about we butcher the original, give it some crappy updates and totally disrespect the original film by changing the ending. That should about do it.

The movie opens with a shuttle crash landing on its way back to earth. People in the DC area begin getting sick. The films main character Carroll Bennell (Nicole Kidman), a psychiatrist who discovers that people around her aren’t just getting sick, they are changing. She teams up with boyfriend/doctor Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig). The two of them attempt to save the world, and her son who is trapped with her alien ex husband.

For the remainder of the film Carroll and her boyfriend try to rescue her son as well as get to the “safe zone”. The problem is, with the exception of a few scenes, it just wasn’t entertaining. It was dry for most of the film. As I sat on my couch bored out of my mind, I thought I would still have the great ending as my payoff. That was until I realized during the anti-climatic climax that they had to change the ending. I would have much rather watched the original again.

My suggestion: Both films were pretty bad. I would recommend these movies if you’ve already cleaned your house, re-laced all of your shoes, mowed the lawn, washed the dishes, called all of your out-of-state friends or relatives, and there is absolutely nothing on TV. Maybe I’m being a little rough because I watched both of these Snorefest back-to-back. Save your time and money while you still can. I’m definitely going to be wary about seeing the next remake. Hollywood is running out of ideas so I’m sure that will be sometime next month.

Not So Fantastic Sequel

Fantastic 4: Rise Of The Silver Surfer

This summer’s movie theme should be, “The Summer Of The Sequels.” I can think of 8 off the top of my head. They market these movies like it’s new material. It’s not! It’s just a remix of a film I watched 2 years ago. I know how I feel about a movie when I respond to questions my friends ask. Here is the actual exchange between me and my friend after the movie:

Friend: How was the movie?
Me: I bought tickets for Transformers

When the first thing out of my mouth is how I bought advanced tickets for another movie 10 days away, not good sign. Some would say it’s a bad sign. You be the judge. Our newest comic sequel , Fantastic 4 , fits the bill with familiar faces, likeable characters, new villains, and the same old story.

The movie opens with the media craze surrounding the wedding of Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) and Sue Storm (Jessica Alba). The movie quickly picks up pace as there are sightings of a silver “comet” like figure on US spy satellites, along with these massive holes in the ground. The Four quickly piece together the what is going on. There have been planets with the strange matter activity and were being destroyed 8 days after the first Silver Surfer sighting. In order to fix things quickly team up with Dr. Doom (Julian McMahon) in hopes of finding the surfer and saving the world.

The movie has on ok premise, but seems to be stale at times. In Spiderman 3 if you took away all the special effects and cheesy dialogue, there was some sort of substance left in the movie. Fantastic 4 lacked that. Not that it was a bad movie, but that it could have been a better movie. One thing that bothers me the most was that the villains weren’t villainous enough. Dr. Doom sort of shows up, does a few bad things, and then leaves. You never got the feeling that they were really in any sort of danger. The relationship between the Surfer and Glactus was talked about but it would have been great to open the movie with a little back-story. I just didn’t feel connected if you know what I mean.

The comic relief of the movie was Johnny Storm (Chris Evans). He has some pretty good one-liners in the film that kept you laughing. Somehow they went away from that in the second half of the movie. The special effects were also very good. The scene where Galactus is eating earth is amazing. As you’ve see in the trailer the Surfer just looks cool, and thanks to Laurence Fishburne he also sounds cool. The first thing my friend said to me after the movie was “I would like to have seen more of the Surfer.” I couldn’t agree more.

My Suggestion: - See it if you need to. I wouldn’t wait in line to see it. There are at least 5 more sequels to come this summer so your $9.75 can wait for Rush Hour 3.

My Grade: 2.0 – Maybe you should study harder, but nobody else is so why should you.