The Happening

This is M. Night's happening and it bores me to death. Some how he felt the need to say “the happening” or “it's happening” at least once every 2 minutes. There are so many mentions it wouldn't even make a good drinking game, you'd be passed out before the halfway point (not that that's a bad thing). Constantly saying the title isn't clever, it's just annoying.

Please tell me it's not just me, but doesn't every M. Night movie feel like the mediocre scripts Alfred Hitchcock passed on? It's unfair to hold him up to the high standards of Hitchcock, but these M. Night movies don't even come close. And even in Hitchcock's lesser films he still approached it enthusiastically; the same can not be said for M. Night as it's obvious he's just phoning it in now.

The Happening feels like a thriller with training wheels. You don't need to think, just listen for the 'Spooky' violins and you'll know something suspenseful is about to happen. Now I understand there are certain film conventions directors use to tell a story, but the movie just feels like M. Night is holding our hand the entire way. Not following the plot, or confused on plot points? Don't worry it won't matter.

I'll get straight to the plot now, the trees do it. The movie starts in a high school, where Mark Wahlberg is teaching a class. He asks them about their theories on the disappearing bees. Finally one student says it's a mystery of nature and no one will ever be able to explain it. This is foreshadowing for beginners, and deflates any sense of suspense the movie might have had (it wouldn't have been much anyway). The class discussion is interrupted by an announcement that a happening is happening (sic) and that school is being let out for the day. Terrorists are suspected of releasing a neurotoxin that causes people to kill themselves so the entire population of New York City evacuate. Mark Wahlberg gets onto a train with his wife, John Leguizamo and his daughter. They're headed to Philadelphia until the train stops in the middle of nowhere and everyone is forced to get out.

Happenings begin to happen all around them, as the main cast heads west looking for refuge. John Leguizamo (a math teacher) splits up from the group and heads east looking for his wife. His character is so annoying that he causes the driver he's hitching a ride with to commit suicide by driving into a tree at full speed killing everyone in the car (really). Mark, his wife and John's kid continue west, they see people kill themselves with guns, a wood chipper (made me laugh) and an assortment of other ways. Mark finally figures out that plants are sending out neurotoxins because they perceive humans to be a threat. The take home message here is that the rain forests are weak and dumb and apparently incapable of defending themselves, but North American trees, grass, garden vegetables, etc are deadly. At first plants are only capable of killing people who are in large groups, but they eventually get smarter and are finally capable of pinpoint killing people in groups of one or two.

My favorite part was when a scientist on TV produces a graph showing that happenings usually continue to grow in strength for about 24 hours then stop completely. This is an interesting fact, especially considering he mistakenly believes the happening to be caused by terrorists. This isn't an isolated incident either, almost everyone in the movie conveniently knows more than they should about things they should know nothing about. This is mostly a byproduct of M. Night holding our hands through the movie making sure we don't miss any essential plot points (the trees do it, theres no essential plot points beyond that).

Finally Mark, his wife and John's daughter find their way to an isolated house inhabited by a creepy old woman. She does generally creepy things, and her house is darkly lit so at times there almost seems like there should be some suspense, but it's too far into the movie by this point, and you already know better. The three refugees spend the night at the creepy womans house. In the morning Mark goes to tell the creepy old woman that they're leaving. She's hiding behind her door and pops out and says some creepy paranoid but still irrelevant things then runs outside. She stands in the middle of a bunch of plants and for a moment you think maybe she's behind the whole happening. She's paranoid, creepy, stays to herself, doesn't care about the world around her and talks about her plants. The wind swirls around her and you think maybe she's the one controlling the plants. It turns out she's insignificant and the plants kill her. Mark runs outside to his wife and John's daughter. Luckily for him the happening has just ended and they all survive. They move back to New York City and it's revealed that the plants really are behind everything. They did it as a warning.

Rating:
7/10 bads.

There are a few moments of unintentional humor and significant plot holes. The story is mediocre and fails to achieve any level of suspense. If you don't mind your kids watching people throw themselves into wood chippers and shoot their brains out (there's no real gore, they show the shoes as people shoot themselves) then it might make a good introduction to the Thriller genre. They won't have to think too much about the plot and it's not too scary. Although it would probably turn them off to the genre, seeing as it has no real redeeming qualities and isn't entertaining in any way.

(10 being the worst movie possible, 1 being only slightly below average. In general, the higher the score, the higher the likely hood of unintentional humor.)

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Like all 'Indy' movies this one starts with and centers around bad stereotyping. I don't know if there's ever good stereotyping but this movie gets it wrong on all levels. I understand they're dumbing down the movie for the masses, but in what world does a bad accent automatically make you a bad guy? An example: Indy has a standard American accent so he's the good guy. The Russian woman with a bad accent, well she's hell bent on controlling the world. Any time you're confused (you wouldn't be, but the average Indy fan would be) you just have to listen or figure out the characters nationality and you'll know if they are good (from America) or bad (from some other country).

I'm not the only one whose not buying Shia Labeouf's mediocre tough guy impersonation. He's trying hard to recreate Brando in 'The Wild One'. He's got the goofy hat, the motorcycle and the cloths, but that's where the comparison ends. Shia knows he can't pull off the full out tough guy, and that's fine, it's good that he knows his limits. And he tries to layer his performance to make it seem like the tough guy routine is just a routine and that's he's really a weak guy underneath. That might have worked if Spielberg didn't continually put Shia's character in ridiculous situations. For example: It's a good thing Shia is such a tough guy and knows how to sword fight, because otherwise the 5 minute sword fight scene he has with the evil foreigner on moving jeeps through the jungle would have been anticlimactic. Not that the sword fight accomplished anything other than adding some “action” to the movie, because the Russian villain still gets to the treasure first. Shia's performance is bad, but it's not as much his fault as it is bad casting.

Who doesn't love one dimensional characters (Everyone reading this should be raising your hand)? Nobody employs the use of one dimensional characters as obviously as Spielberg does. Every time a character is introduced (other than Indy) it becomes quite evident why they are there and what they are there for. The Indy story can't get bogged down with living breathing characters. That might take attention from the action and from Indy. Instead every character is there for one reason only, whether that's to move the story along in one point, to help Indy get past a particular obstacle or to add a (weak) sense of dramatic tension or comedic relief.

The Indy films have never been known for their realism. That's fine, I'm willing to suspend a certain level of disbelief when I watch a movie, especially an action movie. But in what world does surviving an atomic explosion by hiding in a refrigerator make sense? Indy does that within the first 20 minutes of the film. Let me set the scene for you. Against all odds Indy dramatically escapes from the Russian's and finds himself on an atomic test site complete with houses and crash test dummies. He hears sirens go off and a warning that an explosion is about to take place. Now, I'm no expert in atomic bomb testing, but I would think a warning 15 to 20 seconds before a bomb is about to be dropped on you is not enough time to get out of the blast radius (making the warning not only pointless, but absurd). Anyway, Indy thinks quick on his feet and runs into a test house set to be blown up. He quickly clears out a refrigerator and climbs inside. The explosion shoots the refrigerator outside the blast radius and Indy climbs out and watches the mushroom cloud with amazement. It's a good thing Indy expertly picked the one piece of protection that was shot outside the blast radius, and also the one thing that wasn't completely vaporized by the explosion. I didn't notice any other refrigerators being launched out, or anything significant left standing. I figured this was an audience check. If you make it 20 minutes in and see Indy survive an atomic explosion in a refrigerator, you're willing to accept everything that comes next.

The plot of the movie centers around a magical mysterious crystal skull that telepathically communicates with people. The skull tells Indy to return it to its resting place. So we follow Indy and his wacky gang of sidekicks around (can you believe he had a kid he didn't know about from a woman he almost married a long time ago, but has until now been relatively unheard of? How original.) as Indy must overcome the locals and the Russians in an attempt to return the skull.

It turns out that the skull is actually the head of an inter dimensional being, or actually part of a group of inter dimensional beings. But when one of the inter dimensional beings loses its head the entire group of inter dimensional beings freezes. And this group has been frozen for thousands of years because one of them carelessly lost it's head (the crystal skull Indy has). Now if you were a inter dimensional being, capable of cross dimensional travel in a futuristic spaceship, wouldn't you put plans in place to prevent you loosing your crystal head? Not that loosing your head would kill you, it just strands you and all your buddies on the planet until someone comes and places it back on your body. I guess loosing your crystal head is par for the course when you're a member of a group of naked inter dimensional beings sent on an anthropological mission to study planet earth.

The movie ends when Indy's rival, the evil Russian woman, places the skull onto the alien body. The group of aliens come to life and thank the Russian woman for returning the skull and saving them. Out of gratitude they grant her one wish (who knew crystal inter dimensional aliens were also genies?), which she uses to ask for all the knowledge in the world, she wants to know everything. The main alien begins to shoot a stream of information into the womans head, eventually making her head blow up. Presumably her greed and thirst for knowledge killed her. So much for gratitude on the part of the aliens as well as the consistency of the movie's morality. Throughout the entire movie Indy is searching for knowledge which is also what the aliens were sent to earth to do, and Indy tries to get his son (Shia's character) to value the importance of learning. But in the end, the evil woman had a bad accent and underestimated the brain's capacity to store information and thus was fated to blow up. The inter dimensional beings then climbed into their space ship with all their archaeological treasures and flew off into outer space before they finally shot off into another dimension. Indy ends the day with the greatest treasure of all, a family.

Rating:

6.5/10 Bads

I found myself laughing at it and not with it, but it's not bad enough to be worth watching again.

(10 being the worst movie possible, 1 being only slightly below average. In general, the higher the score, the higher the likely hood of unintentional humor.)