Last night, I sat down to watch a DVD I'd checked out of the library--
The Forgotten. It was a movie I'd seen a preview for before
Spider-Man 2 last summer and while the preview didn't make me want to run out to the theater and fling down some money to watch it, I was interesting enough to give it a whirl on DVD.
All I can say is--thank goodness I didn't spend any actual money to see this trite worthless film. It's not quite in the same leauge as
A View From The Top, but good heavens, it's coming awfully close. I will say this--I did make it throug all of the actual movie this time. But that may have been only because I wanted to see how they'd address the central mystery of the movie.
The story is basically this--Julianne Moore had a son who died in a plane crash. She is having a hard time letting go. Slowly, evidence that her son existed starts to disappear and people start to forget him. She's in therapy with Gary Sinese and married to Anthony Edwards. Her character is forced to go on the run and meet up with an ex-hockey player who lost a daughter in the same crash. Slowly evidence is taken away until the only thing these two have left is their memories of their children. And they start getting chased by federal agents. Did I forget that part?
Turns out that some type of higher intelligence is toying with us. They do things to us, watch how we react and then pull a Men in Black flashy thing number. But sometimes people remember things--like Julianne Moore and the hockey player guy. Everyone is abducted--implying that its aliens doing all of this to us. Why? Because they're curious and mean is all I can figure out. We're little more than lab rats to them.
That is, until the end when after the aliens tell Julianne Moore--by the way, you won't ever seen your son again, she then is returned to her home and finds him at the park. Is it all a dream? Did the aliens show mercy? Was it all some hallucination of a crazy woman? Will I have the 91 minutes of my life back I wasted on this film?
OK, so I could almost accept the storyline if it were not for some of the sheer ludicrious leaps of plot that are involved here. If you saw the preview for this, one scene has Julianne Moore going to hockey guys apartment, seeing a small tear in the wall paper and tearing it all up to reveal evidence that the daughter drew on the walls. OK, so you're evil aliens who go so far as to erase everyone's memory of this, but you hire sub-par contractors to put up the wallpaper?!? Or you can't afford a couple of gallons of paint before you wall paper?!? Then, every time someone gets close to figuring out how to help Julianne Moore, they are zapped away...it's kind of creepy effect, actually. And these aliens who are so all knowing and such but they can't keep up with one or two people...come on! Oh yeah, Gary Sinese works for them..he's one of the few who's not been flashy-thinged for some reason that's never really made all that clear.
I swear, all that is missing is Doggett, Reyes and Scully and you've got a bad season nine episode of
The X-Files.
Truly a bad film. I can see why it tanked. I'm almost tempted to listen to the commentary on it to see what in the name of heaven they were thinking or maybe if they'd apologize for the movie being so bad. But I'm afriad I'd have to sit through the 91 minutes of the movie again...and that is not something I'm eager to do.
posted by Michael Hickerson at 5/08/2005 11:43:00 AM |
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