Masturbating Teenagers, Unsweet Statutory, And The Continued Seduction Of Selena Gomez Make Behaving Badly Creepier Than It Is Funny.

The Good: Fun, fast-paced dialogue, Good cast
The Bad: Third wall breaks, Creepy direction, Uses all of the conceits of the genre
The Basics: Behaving Badly is an unsettling sex comedy that has an impressive cast doing terrible things.


After pretty much every major studio release I watch, I try to catch an independent film. I like supporting indie films and trying to find a balance between the popular films and the art films in my reviews helps keep me a well-rounded reviewer. Sadly, not all independent or artsy films are actually worth it. Behaving Badly is one such “indie” film. While the movie has a surprisingly good cast for a movie unlikely to blow up at the box office, even with its August release, it fails to rise above a schmaltzy sex comedy. While there are sex-focused comedies (as opposed to romantic comedies that are focused on relationships, sex comedies are fundamentally just about a protagonist getting laid) that are actually worthwhile, Behaving Badly is not one. Behaving Badly is not this year’s Sex Drive (reviewed here!).

Behaving Badly is a lackluster comedy that seems like it is trading on Selena Gomez’s star power and the popularity of sex comedies as forged by prior works like American Pie and, to a much lesser extent, movies like Miss March (reviewed here!). In other words, the film trades much more on cheap background nudity, softcore seduction dialogue, and frequent references to teenage masturbation than anything genuinely clever. As is typical of these films, the teenage protagonists are unrealistically smart, beautiful and charmed by everything that is outside their initial characterization (in this case, Selena Gomez’s Nina Pennington is uber-religious – in a fundamentalist Christian way- yet finds it enchanting when Rick extorts his pedophilic adulterous father when they catch him with an underage hooker and the father of his best friend).

Rick Stevens is a fairly normal teenager who finds himself in a world of trouble with a dead body in his car trunk and a case of crabs when he finds his mother on the couch, near death, as part of her latest melodramatic suicide attempt. In the suicide note addressed to him, Rick learns that his mother found out that he had a fling with is best friend’s mother. The story flashes back to how Rick found himself in the predicament by going back two weeks prior to an average day. On that day, he more or less gets a blowjob from a stripper before his best friend’s mother, Pamela, seduces him. Rick worries about what this means for his chances with Nina Pennington, the girl he has lusted over for years. After Rick lies to Nina about knowing Josh Groban, who is in town for a concert the next night, Rick becomes determined to get backstage passes. To that end, Rick asks the local strip club owner for a favor and in exchange for tickets, he has to go buy ecstasy for the perverted scumbag. Screwed on that deal, Rick and his best friend Billy Bender witness their fathers at a nearby hotel having sex with an underage hooker, which helps them get out of a dent Rick put in the car.

Continuing to lust after the idealistic Nina, Rick tries to resist his hot lawyer (when the Aston Martin the Lithuanian mobsters who are fixing the car give him as a loaner gets him in trouble with the police) and Pamela. To raise money, Rick throws a party with his sister and her stripper friends. That leads to a number of arrests that force Rick to try to save all of the people in his life as well as rise to the occasion of being the boy that Nina wants him to be.

Behaving Badly has virtually all of the conceits of the genre, including the meathead ex-boyfriend of the chaste girl the protagonist lusts after who brings violence into mix and pointless drug references. The result is a movie that feels stale, despite the fast-pace of the dialogue and a few initially snappy jokes. The humor is split between quick, witty remarks and awkward attempts to sexualize a number of young actors and actresses who are playing characters much younger than they are. The visual gags are relegated to frequent shots of Billy nervously vomiting and things like sex toys being washed alongside dishes.

Instead of being funny or even titillating, Behaving Badly has a pretty high creep-out factor. Rick Stevens tells his lawyer he is seventeen when she offers him a cigarette, so most of the film is preoccupied with an underage boy getting statutory raped by his best friend’s mother and masturbating frequently. Actors Nat Wolff (Rick) and Lachlan Buchanan (Billy) might be of legal age, but the characters they play are not, so director Tim Garrick’s obsession with crotch shots of the two in their underwear is just creepy.

Behaving Badly is not even overly original. Rick gets into a bet with a psychopath that he can bed Nina and that’s the basic plot of at least one other popular sex comedy. So, fans of nudity and Selena Gomez blowing kisses and flirting to the camera are likely to feel that they have seen everything in Behaving Badly before. There is nothing exceptional or original about Behaving Badly.

That leads to the big mystery of Behaving Badly. How did Tim Garrick assemble such an impressive cast for such a piece of crap film?! Actors who participate in Behaving Badly include the hilarious Cary Elwes, Jason Lee and Patrick Warburton, along with a well-used Heather Graham, Elisabeth Shue, and Mary-Louise Parker. Dylan McDermott might well be playing his funniest character in his repertoire as strip club owner Jimmy Leach. The usually dramatic McDermott is slick, creepy, and does some hilarious physical comedy in Behaving Badly.

Nat Wolff plays the archetypal “I can’t get laid, but I seem to have sex all over the place” plain high school student Rick Stevens in Behaving Badly. Wolff is bland, but plays the straight-laced bland kid well.

Selena Gomez plays Nina Pennington and her role infuses something smart and satirical into the otherwise vacuous and dull Behaving Badly. Writers Tim Garrick and Scott Russell use Gomez to sneak in a number of lines about church hypocrisy and naïve overachievers that Gomez plays with a straight face well. Still, Gomez seems to be around mostly for the cute factor and the shock of the well-established good girl being around strippers, adulterers, and masturbating teenagers.

Even to see that, Behaving Badly is not worth it. The moments of cleverness and the moments the impressive cast is used in ways unconventional for the performers do not justify the rest of the film’s content. The jokes are more misses than hits and the only surprise in Behaving Badly was that the oft-referenced Josh Groban does not make a cameo appearance.

For other sex-driven films, please check out my reviews of:
Bound
Walk Of Shame
Making The Rules

2.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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At Least It’s Not “Home Alone In The White House:” Olympus Has Fallen

The Good: Decent performances, Attempts at character/character development, Effects/tension.
The Bad: Increasingly absurd and predictable plot
The Basics: Shakier than many might want to admit, Olympus Has Fallen is engaging . . . so long as one shuts off their brain.


Sometime, admittedly, a work suffers in my estimation because of when I encounter it. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is true. In the case of Olympus Has Fallen I feel less bad about my bias. My wife and I have been watching Babylon 5 (reviewed here!) nightly and that show features a cast of characters who tend to have a sense of personal ethics and a backbone. One of the themes of the show is the value of sacrificing the individual to service the greater good. Apparently, the writers of Olympus Has Fallen either never watched Babylon 5 or did not embrace the themes.

It’s too bad, because Babylon 5 is quite a bit smarter than Olympus Has Fallen and I spent much of the film waiting for one of the characters to make things easy and thus defuse the entire situation. Up until the film’s last ten minutes, a perfectly reasonable solution to the hostage situation the film focuses on was for any one of the four relevant hostages to sacrifice themselves and thus effectively neuter the hostage-takers. In fact, the President makes things more dangerous for the members of his staff whom he encourages to surrender!

At Christmastime, the American President, Banjamin Asher and his family are headed to an event when their motorcade is attacked and the first lady is killed. A year and a half later, the secret service agent (Mike Banning) who was blamed for failing to protect her is eager to return to White House Security. Asher has the South Koreans to the White House to talk about the growing nuclear threat from North Korea. At that time, the White House is attacked and in securing the President and his guests in the subterranean bunker below the White House, the President and Secret Service inadvertently lock themselves in with the masterminds behind the attack. The North Korean terrorist Kang, who had worked with the U.S. as a South Korean diplomat to carry out his acts of terrorism and the traitorous American, Forbes, take the President, Defense Secretary and others hostage in order to get the codes to a nuclear weapons deactivation system known as Cerberus.

While the President holds out against torture and allows his brutalized staff to comply to protect them, the Speaker Of The House, Trumbull, is elevated to the Presidency to deal with the current crisis. Even as Kang and his forces work over the staff for the Cerberus codes, Banning infiltrates the wreckage of the White House to find the President’s son, Connor, to prevent him from being used against the President. As the effort to save the hostages and avert all-out war with North Korea comes from Trumbull’s apparent willingness to accede to Kang’s demands to remove U.S. troops from South Korea and the Pacific, Banning acts as eyes and ears inside the besieged White House.

The tragedy of Olympus Has Fallen is not that it depicts an incredibly brutal series of events (there is no entertainment value to watching Melissa Leo’s Secretary Of Defense McMillan getting brutalized), it is in that most of it is entirely avoidable based on a single act of sacrifice. But, more than that, on the character front, none of them are presented as being smart enough to realize that. Olympus Has Fallen features the obvious and familiar dichotomy of politicians being spineless jerks who fold and are generally unprincipled and only soldiers, secret service officers, etc. (who have a decidedly more militaristic bent) can hold out against violent adversaries. Accepting the conceit of the Cerberus device, which had the activation codes split up among four people, it makes perfect sense that either all four people would never be allowed in the same place at the same time (much like one of the members of the Cabinet being kept away from the State Of The Union Address in order to protect the line of succession) or, barring that, the moment one of the four people with the codes realizing what Kang had planned to commit an act of sacrifice.

So, I was a bit disappointed.

To be fair to Olympus Has Fallen, the film did not take the most obvious plot progressions it could have. I kept waiting for, late in the film when all else had failed, Banning’s partner, Leah, to get abducted and thus force him to stand down. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. Still, most of Olympus Has Fallen progresses in an obvious and pretty brutal way.

What is better-than-average is the acting. Gerard Butler is credible as Mike Banning and he, predictably, gets through the action sequences exceptionally well. More than that, he actually displays his charisma (which I usually refer to as “alleged charisma”) in the early scenes of the film, making the character seem likable and smart enough to be a credible secret service agent. To his credit, Dylan McDermott – who as recently as five years ago would have been credibly up for the role of Banning – plays Forbes with a character-appropriate level of dispassion and conniving, never hinting that he could have been the film’s action hero.

Rick Yune is decent as Kang, though he plays the most horrible version of a patriot. Kang is calculating, but comes in with a plan and an efficient demeanor which Yune plays perfectly. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Melissa Leo as McMillan. Leo’s performance is difficult to watch as her character is pretty horribly brutalized by the terrorists. It’s impossible not to watch Melissa Leo in Olympus Has Fallen and not have one’s stomach tighten in disgust; so realistically does she portray getting tormented. Aaron Eckhart is appropriately presidential in his bearing as President Benjamin Asher.

But, I suspect the reason Morgan Freeman is getting so much high praise for his performance in Olympus Has Fallen is that, in the role of Trumbull, he seems anything but Presidential. It’s hard to imagine Morgan Freeman as not being commanding, powerful, confident and smart enough to lead the free world, but he makes Trumbull uncertain and shaky at the beginning and the performance is a wonderful one because it goes against any number of other performances we have seen from Freeman (or interviews with the actor himself).

Still, it is not enough to save Olympus Has Fallen from “average” territory. Go in with low expectations and it is fine, but for enlightened folk, it is a much harder sell.

For other works with Melissa Leo, please check out my reviews of:
Flight
Red State
Welcome To The Rileys
The L Word - Season Two
Hide And Seek
Homicide: Life On The Street

5.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Mindfuck Of Young Love Is Well-Chronicled In The Perks Of Being A Wallflower!

The Good: Interesting characters, Good mood, Excellent acting, Decent direction
The Bad: The realism is somewhat oppressive, Drug use conceit
The Basics: The Perks Of Being A Wallflower is a well-developed romantic drama that is just about as painful to watch as real life.


When I first moved to Michigan at the end of summer, I went to see The Words (reviewed here!) in the movie theater, which was an hour away, and I saw a preview for The Perks Of Being A Wallflower. The Perks Of Being A Wallflower looked engaging, but when it came to that closest theater, it was gone before I could get to see it. There are no good art theaters in my neck of the woods. So, it took until tonight to actually get around to seeing The Perks Of Being A Wallflower.

And it is good.

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower is good, but it is one of those coming-of-age films that hits the nail on the head and portrays a level of realism that is so perfectly created that anyone who had an awkward childhood will find it to not be entertainment at all. If I were still young and disenfranchised, I could easily see how The Perks Of Being A Wallflower would have been one of my favorite movies. As it is, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower is one of the great outsider films and ranks higher in my book than The Breakfast Club (reviewed here!) because it is more focused and far less preachy. It is, however, not nearly as easy and it does not strive for humorous, so when it is funny, it gets much more organic laughs.

A pretty solid romantic drama, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower intrigued me because it is set in a weirdly nebulous time where records and audio cassettes are still prevalent, but there are openly gay high school students and mentions of condoms (which I usually associate in the public consciousness as being after the rise of the compact disc, go figure).

Charlie is starting his Freshman year of high school, after having suffered a breakdown his prior year. On his first day as a Freshman, he befriends his English teacher, Mr. Anderson, and is quietly amused by the antics of Patrick (a fairly obviously gay Senior). When Charlie tries to step out by going to a football game, he actually meets Patrick and his step-sister, Sam. Charlie is instantly drawn to Sam and the three of them begin hanging out. Sam shows a protective instinct toward Charlie when her friends give him a pot brownie and he realizes how attracted to her he is when they go to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

While Sam is going out with a loser, Charlie struggles with his feelings for Sam and the effects of the death of his favorite person in the world (his Aunt). As Patrick wrestles with the relationship he has with his closeted boyfriend, Sam haplessly falls into a relationship with another girl in their little social circle (an angry Buddhist named Mary Elizabeth). Despite their mismatched relationships, a love develops between Sam and Charlie that is threatened by her actually getting into the college she wants to (Penn State).

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower is good for the way it explores depression, love, youth and mental illness without it ever being so oppressive as to be unpleasant. Unlike something like The Soloist (reviewed here!) where the mood is enough to make one want to die, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower captures some youthful joy and moments when love and life are powerfully and positively explored.

What separates The Perks Of Being A Wallflower from so many other films with youthful angst and/or mental illness, are the characters. Charlie, Patrick, and Sam are vibrant and wonderful characters who are presented with incredible realism. Charlie is a character who is clearly suffering from the very beginning, but his awkwardness seems initially like normal youthful angst. Fortunately, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower goes deeper. Patrick and Sam are likable and vibrant, though it seems utterly inexplicable that none of these young people know “Heroes” by David Bowie! In fact, my only issue with the characters are how they fall into the painfully familiar and obvious conceit of outsiders using drugs. That, to me, is as passé as people who think that smoking at a young age makes them a rebel.

On the acting front, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower is a wonderful use of some incredible young talent. I laugh at the idea that so many critic touted how Emma Watson’s performance as dramatically different for her. Given that most of us had only seen her in the Harry Potter Saga (reviewed here!), it seemed like a pretty silly assertion to make. Watson is mature and complicated in The Perks Of Being A Wallflower and she actually manages to sell the viewer on her character being something other than the smartest person in the room. Ezra Miller steals virtually every scene he is in as Patrick and Mae Whitman (Mary Elizabeth), Paul Rudd (Mr. Anderson), Dylan McDermott and Mary Walsh give ideal supporting performances in that they show up, embody their characters with enough force and dignity to portray them, without ever stealing the light from Logan Lerman’s Charlie.

Logan Lerman, for his part, is great as Charlie. He plays Charlie with an appropriately withdrawn physical presence, but eyes that are always expressive and moving, clearly portraying his character as deeply engaged in the world around him. Lerman makes Charlie seem entirely plausible and real, even when that makes watching The Perks Of Being A Wallflower a little difficult.

On DVD and Blu-Ray, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower comes with two different commentary tracks, deleted scenes, dailies and a featurette. For a romantic drama that saw limited release, this is packaged to the teeth with goodies for the fans.

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower is an incredible, worthwhile, work about youthful outsiders that is essential viewing.

For other works with Logan Lerman, please visit my reviews of:
Gamer
Meet Bill
What Women Want

8.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Back Before It Was Good - The Practice - Volume 1

The Good: Some decent acting, Interesting story lines, Seeds of interesting character
The Bad: Only 13 episodes, Lame DVD extra, Rocky start
The Basics: Despite what The Practice became, it had a rockier start than I remembered and the DVD offers little for fans to entice them into this set.


When I recently wrote an article on the Top 10 Television Shows I No Longer Miss, I discovered that for all of the years of watching The Practice, I didn't feel any emptiness with its absence. For sure, it segued nicely into Boston Legal's first season (reviewed here!), but after years of watching it and enjoying several of the characters, I found there was nothing missing in my life with The Practice gone. Feeling I ought to have some sense of something missing, given that I devoted eight years (okay, seven and a quarter) to watching the show, I decided it was time to pick up The Practice - Volume 1 on DVD. This is "Volume One" because it includes all six episodes of the first season and seven from the second season. Why only seven? I have no idea. Apparently, the cost would have been too great to include both seasons one and two (other shows have done it!) and not cost enough to only sell the first season. Go figure.

Having rewatched the first thirteen episodes of the series again, it's a surprise the show lasted as long as it did. That's not to say it isn't good, but it isn't great. The seeds of what it became are there, but the actual greatness . . . it wasn't there from the beginning. Following a quasi-serialized storyline through its first season, The Practice builds into something worth watching, but this first volume truly is the toss of a coin for whether or not to pick it up.

Donnell and Associates is a Boston law firm headed by Bobby Donnell, a lawyer whose idealism has faded to accommodate the day to day struggle to pay the bills. As a result, he often finds himself representing drug dealers, people who expose themselves in public, and robbers. With his associates, he tries to build a respectable firm and in the process gains some notoriety in the law community for winning unwinnable cases.

In this first volume, serialized elements include cases involving Lindsay Dole prosecuting a wrongful death case against Big Tobacco, Bobby representing a doctor with anger management issues, "Free Willy," as well as an arc involving Bobby securing a loan from a friend to keep the business afloat. There are also episodic cases woven in, which involve such things as Eugene defending an armed robber, a 19 year-old accused of statutory rape, and Lindsay representing an alleged bomber.

What makes this volume such a crapshoot is that the cases are often much more interesting than the characters. The show begins its tenure as very plot-driven and it takes some time for it to evolve into something that is heavy on the character. The seeds of the characters that they come to be are definitely there and it's worthwhile to see who the principles of Donnell and Associates are. The primary characters in the first volume include:

Bobby Donnell - Founder of the firm, he's idealistic, but his idealism is fading in the face of the bills and making day-to-day ends meet. He emotionally invests himself in his cases and often believes that his clients are either not guilty or that there were procedural errors used to arrest or prosecute them. He works to hold the firm together and keep everyone focused on their cases, though he finds himself in over his head defending a doctor with rage issues,

Jimmy Berluti - An old friend of Bobby's, he is brought to the firm after falsifying loan documents to help Bobby get a loan. He is shy, awkward and does not have the killer instinct to practice law, despite being a lawyer,

Ellenor Frutt - An associate who is a cut-to-the-chase type person. She gives great arguments in court and in the office, but finds herself with little social life and difficulty making new friends because of her size,

Lindsay Dole - An efficient, highly ethical lawyer, she wants parity with Bobby, especially when she begins to take on big clients for the firm. She has a former professor who she finds herself up against in court, which makes it difficult at times for her to do her best work,

Rebecca Washington - The firm's receptionist, she acts as a paralegal for the others at Donnell and Associates,

Helen Gamble - An Assistant District Attorney and adversary to those at Donnell and Associates, she enters in the second season to take on the firm, though she works hard to keep her side of the law ethical,

and Eugene Young - A former private investigator, he is motivated by a strong desire to win. An old friend of Bobby's, he helped start the firm and he's not wild about Jimmy coming to work with the rest of the group. Eugene is a parent, though he almost never sees his son as his wife has custody of him. Eugene throws himself into his work, angrily combating prosecutorial or police misconduct against his clients.

With Volume One, the characters are getting their feet wet and despite the fact that many of the characters have known one another for years, there are still a number of scenes that feel like beginnings. The viewer has to train themselves to accept these conceits and, honestly, it's a little hard to swallow.

Similarly, some of the actors do not seem comfortable with their roles or the jargon associated with it. Kelli Williams seems to take a few episodes to get into the swing of things, as does Lisa Gay Hamilton. Michael Badaluco seems to have a much more firm grasp on his character and role once he joins the cast after his first few appearances.

Conversely, Steve Harris comes in the first episode and seems to have a firm grasp on who his character is. Harris plays Eugene and from his opening lines, he is in control and confident within the persona of the lawyer who will fight without mercy for his clients. Harris is given little opportunity to show he's enjoying himself - Eugene is quite straightlaced - though he does manage to take advantage of the few opportunities that come his way, like infusing the hints of a smile when Eugene starts betting against the ADA on a case they are trying.

The show is held together by Dylan McDermott, who stars as Bobby Donnell. This is, arguably, the role that made McDermott a household name and he holds up his end well, though the early episodes are difficult to determine where his acting is shaky and where his character is unsure. Sometimes, McDermott's cadence is off. But for the most part, he is able to assume the mantel of leadership - even if it is only of a law firm - and he plays the part well.

The only DVD extra is a featurette about the origins of the show. That's a huge disappointment for fans of the series as it is not nearly as insightful as commentary or . . . well, more featurettes would be.

The nice thing about The Practice is that while certain character elements are serialized, most of the cases (and episodes) are episodic in nature, allowing one to jump in later. Ultimately, my recommendation for this boxed set came down to a coin toss. It's pretty average television on a below average DVD presentation. But for those looking for the origins of the great show to come, this is where to start.

For other works with Camryn Manheim, be sure to visit my reviews of:
The L Word - Season 2
Dark Water
Twisted

5.5/10

For other television reviews, be sure to visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Oh My, Another Absolutely Terrible Horror Film Without Redemption: The Messengers

The Good: Well, it makes for great MST3K fodder . . .
The Bad: Wow . . . everything. Acting, characters, plot, direction, effects, all of it.
The Basics: In another disappointing horror flick, the undead come to a troubled family's new farm where only the youth can see them.


NOTE: This review was originally written in 2007, when this film was new. I was amused by my assessment of Kristen Stewart at the time and decided to keep it in here! Enjoy!

Every time I sit down to write a movie review, I look the film up on the IMDB in order to be sure that I am getting the spellings of names correctly and to properly reference things like the directors, writers, etc. Whenever I do this - which is especially useful, notably for reviews I'm writing weeks after seeing a film - I usually learn something about the work I am reviewing. Every now and again, I become baffled by something I find out about the film that makes me just shake my head. In the case of The Messengers, when I sat down to prepare this review, I was reminded that there were two directors for this movie and I learned that there were two writers for it as well. My thought was dismay to think that it took four people to create this piece of crap.

When the Solomon family moves out to North Dakota to start their new life on a farm, disturbed daughter Jess begins to see things. Her younger brother, Ben, mute for months, sees the undead as well wandering around the house and doing generally creepy things. Because Jess has a prior incident that left her parents distrustful of her, father Roy and mother Denise tend to focus on growing sunflowers and shooing away the murders of crows that appear to eat the crop. They take in the kindly Burwell Rollins, who helps with the farming and they wait for the crop of sunflower seeds to come in to make a living at this. Meanwhile, Jess faces the specters that roam the farmhouse and tries to unravel the apparent mystery of the haunted house.

This witless work reminds one of just how bad horror movies have the potential to be. Like Pulse, the basic premise of The Messengers is not necessarily bad. Unfortunately, the idea of children seeing the forces of evil that adults are blinded to, is sublimated by effect-rich shots that make absolutely no sense (like how the basement floor of the farmhouse becomes selectively liquid throughout the film). Instead, The Messengers quickly degenerates into yet another undead revenge story a la The Grudge or Dark Water. Sadly, even while watching The Messengers, my thought was "there is so much here for the next Scary Movie installment!"

What's so bad about The Messengers? First, let's start with the obviousness of the plot and character devices. Like a good drama, The Messengers begins with the sense that the Solomon family is a family with a backstory. There is a history to the group that has resulted in Roy being wary of Jess and Denise outright not trusting her. Ben does not speak, even when in mortal peril. The obvious directions for this movie to go would be for the viewer to find out about the incident that precipitated the move (which no doubt closely relates to the current paranormal situation) and sometime before the end of the flick, the silent child would speak again. And lo and behold! This is EXACTLY the way the movie goes. This movie is utterly unsurprising and as a result, completely unoriginal.

The only thing less clever than the plotting of the film, wherein the only interloper into the family - Rollins - naturally is not what he appears, is the characterization. All of the characters are fairly generic and the results of the combination of the "types" is more silly than suspenseful. William B. Davis - beloved by fans of The X-Files for his portrayal of The Cigarrette-Smoking Man - appears in what amounts to a cameo as a Generic Creepy Guy who offers to buy the farm back from Roy right away. The purpose of his character is not so much to provide valuable plot information or even a reasonable amount of suspense, but rather to fill an obvious niche in the horror film as the creepy sage who provides a warning to the protagonist (the witches in The Tragedy Of MacBeth filled the same niche, only with much greater purpose).

Roy is the generic father figure and the moment he becomes remarkably - near the end of the film - the result is more laughable and disappointing than heroic. Without ruining anything of this flick, I shall simply say that when a film sets up a character as the "typical father" and then tacks on an exceptional ability (like the ability to do anything physical after a trauma to the body), the result has to be explained or it falls flat and into the realm well outside suspension of disbelief. Roy falls into such territory so that the legitimacy of the end of the film is completely compromised.

But much of the film remains focused on Jess, played by Kristen Stewart the jailbait of the week actress who is attempting to carve out a niche on the big screen. The directors arguably do not use Stewart as any form of sex symbol (a relief given her age, though that doesn't seem to stop most directors these days!) and her asexual qualities play fine throughout the movie until The Messengers tacks on "Generic Romance Subplot #12" wherein Young Woman (damsel in distress) must express some interest in Local Boy of Approximately Same Age. Jess pairs up, even minimally, with Bobby in a pointless plot move designed to bring the film closer to 90 minutes (it fails, clocking out at 84 minutes!).

And this is where writers Mark Wheaton and Todd Farmer ought to lose their ability to ever write - especially in Hollywood - for eternity. The whole point of virtually any Romantic Subplot that is tacked on to a film that has no real need for romance is simple; it's designed to make the viewer care about the protagonist and/or to insinuate that the character on screen has something more to live for than themselves or their immediate goal. Jess does not. Moreover, her brief, mostly implicit relationship with the bland local boy does not make her more interesting, does not give her more incentive to live and it certainly does not give the viewer more of a reason to watch.

Instead, this film is a continued disappointment. The disappointment resulting from watching Dylan McDermott slouch around the sunflower fields without any spark of intellect or intrigue that he possessed on The Practice is trumped only by the mystery of how the directors got John Corbett (from Northern Exposure) to play such a dull and disappointing character as Burwell.

The DVD extras are similarly unenthusiastic with such things as the trailer and featurette being uninformative and as dull as the film.

No, The Messengers will not scare, certainly not thirteen year-olds or older, it will not entertain and it won't even amuse. If you insist on watching this piece of garbage, at least have someone watch it with you who can wisecrack throughout to make it more entertaining. Otherwise, it's a waste of 84 minutes of life.

For other works with Kristen Stewart, please visit my reviews of:
Breaking Swan Part 1
Eclipse
The Runaways
New Moon
Twilight

0/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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