For a struggling actor, there are few things more frustrating than watching a terrible performance on Broadway or in a major motion picture. For a struggling writer, it's difficult to find anything more frustrating than picking up a bestselling novel only to discover that it's nothing more than lazily-written drivel. And for a struggling filmmaker, there's nothing more frustrating than M. Knight Shyamalan!
This is a guy who had one great idea, and for no discernible reason people keep giving him money to make more movies. There's no better evidence that the guy's a hack than his latest film
The Happening. But what can you really expect from a man who, in his last film, cast himself as a writer whose ideas were so brilliant and so revolutionary that they would change the world? This guy is so convinced he's a prophet that he never passes up an opportunity to preach, including in this movie a rant about how unfair it is that hot dogs always get a bad rap. Seriously.
Seriously.
This movie provides ample frustration for actors, writers, and filmmakers alike. Everything about it is awful! The idea is bad, the script is bad, the pacing is bad, the acting is bad, the cinematography is bad, the story is bad. It's bad. It's really, really bad.
And what happened? We've seen Mark Wahlberg and John Leguizamo and even Zooey Deschanel give solid performances. We know these folks can act. But here, they're terrible. They're just terrible. Every word out of every character's mouth is stunted and painful to listen to. Honestly, you truly feel embarrassed for these people.
I gotta run you through this, all the way through this. I was gonna try to review this without any spoilers, but I just can't do it justice without giving away the whole plot. So if you really want to see this, which you don't, then you should see it before you read this.
So it starts with two terrible actresses sitting on a bench in Central Park. They have some bad dialogue, then one pulls out a ridiculously huge hairpin and jams it into her neck.
Then it cuts to a construction site where four or five horrible actors stand around in construction worker outfits. Then bodies fall from the scaffolding. And people die.
Then we see a high school science class somewhere in Pennsylvania, maybe Philadelphia (I'm not sure). Mark Wahlberg is the retarded (I think) science teacher and he's asking for theories about why all the honeybees have disappeared. Then there's this uncomfortably homo-erotic moment between Wahlberg and one of the male students, where Marky-Mark says the student's got perfect features and he'll be gorgeous the rest of his life. Then he asks the student for a theory and he says something like, "It's just one of those things that science will try to explain but that we'll never truly understand." Look out! This line comes back at the end when the movie makes absolutely no sense at all. A respected scientist actually says, referring to the events of the movie, "...this is just one of those things we'll never truly understand." (Incidentally the "gorgeous" student isn't that good looking.)
In an effort to keep this review from meandering the way the plot does, I'm going to skip ahead. It turns out there are all these "happenings" in the major cities of New England. So Wahlberg and his crazy, depressive, clingy, immature, touchy, moody, whiny, obnoxious wife (Zooey Deschanel) and Wahlberg's colleague (John Leguizamo) and his colleague's daughter all get on a train to a more rural area. The train breaks down in the middle of nowhere and people keep getting infected by this toxin that makes them kill themselves. Terrorism is suspected. "As if there wasn't enough evil in the world, they come up with this," Deschanel says, or something to that effect but just as badly written.
So they try to find somewhere to go and get a ride from this crazy guy who has a greenhouse, loves hot dogs and is convinced that the plants are responsible for all this. That's ridiculous!
Oh, and John Leguizamo goes off with someone else so the other two (who, incidentally, though it has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot, are having some really generic marriage problems) have to take his daughter. In the next scene, Leguizamo kills himself (because of the toxin).
Through some turn of events the couple and the little girl end up in the middle of a field with a large group of people and Wahlberg figures out that it actually is the plants that are releasing a toxin that forces people to kill themselves. I'm totally serious. The plants really are killing everyone. That really is what the movie is about. It's the plants! Grass, weeds, trees, shrubbery. Shrubberies are killing people!
Uh oh, it's windy. So Wahlberg tells his small group (of five) to run. Yes, he tells them to outrun the wind. And they do. They run through this field and the wind whips at the tall grass in their wake.
They outrun the wind!!!
While running we meet two teenage boys who've joined our hapless trio. But don't get too attached because they both get blown away by a shotgun in the next scene. Man, Shyamalan spends so much time on drawing his audience in through deep character development.
The couple and little girl happen upon a house where a crazy old lady who makes all her own clothes and grows all her own food and has absolutely no contact with anyone else. She's insane and just rants about nothing. There's some obtuse dialogue about love and politics and whatever else. None of it makes any sense at all. Then she accuses Wahlberg of trying to kill her, then offers them a room to stay for the night, then in the morning accuses them of trying to rob her, then of trying to kill her again, then she goes outside and gets attacked by the toxin. She tries to kill Wahlberg while trying to kill herself. Then he goes outside to find his wife, though this makes no sense because she's inside, but luckily he doesn't get attacked by the toxin, then there's this painfully awkward scene whose geography I was unable to figure out, where Wahlberg and Deschanel have a conversation through some kind of pipe or ductwork. It's confusing and the dialogue is uncomfortably sappy.
Thank heavens the plant-toxin attack ends right then and our trio survives. They adopt the daughter and watch a TV interview with a scientist who says, "This is just one of those things we'll never truly understand."
Yes, it's over. The attack ended abruptly for no reason and with no explanation.
Oh, then we cut to Paris and there's another attack following some rhetoric about how the human population is ruining the planet and the planet is fighting back and this is just a warning.
Fade to black. And you bury your head in your hands, moaning
why, oh why?
Eli Stone: What a great season premiere. Seriously. I thought the first season was good, some episodes were great but not all. But this season premiere was fantastic with some wonderful twists.
My Own Worst Enemy: Based on the pilot alone, I'm going to call this the best new show of the season. I'm not sure where they'll go with it because the pilot was packed with everything imaginable, but it was pretty great.
Numb3rs: I like this show, but I just can't watch it anymore. It's worn out its welcome and the season premiere didn't do anything to convince me otherwise.
