Prodigy

This is one of those movies where the director and the writer are the same person. I often suspect this happens when the writer can't get any studio to produce his work and so decides to go it alone and do it himself (not always, of course). Sometimes, the result is a really interesting, original movie. I've come across a few of those. Unfortunately, this movie does not belong to that group. Whatever studio(s) gave this script the thumbs down made the right decision. It is that bad.

This is chock full of themes and ideas from other, better, movies. Despite that, there are plenty of holes in the plot. It boasts a roll call of truly cliched characters - the jaded father who drinks to forget and has become estranged from his family; the barmaid with the heart of gold and a sad past; the sinister doctor from a mysterious and unethical government agency; and the group of murderous rednecks with guns etc etc. They're all there. What the movie does lack is tension, excitement and a plot you care about. You won't have seen the cast in any other movies and you probably never will. They may very well be the director's family members for all I know. Some of the male cast members do look similar. Sadly, none of them can act and it's sometimes painful to watch them trying. This movie was done on the cheap and it shows. I hope no one mortgaged their house to make this movie! The script occasionally throws up some quasi-religious gobbledygook and once or twice I was asking myself if this was maybe produced by some religious organisation. I'm still not sure. The religious stuff does nothing to make the movie more enjoyable though, as you may expect.

Coming in at almost two hours, this movie is a real test of endurance. I watched it to the end, not because I was engrossed in the story, but because I wanted to see how bad it got. The answer - pretty bad. I happily recommend that you give this movie a miss and assure you that you wont actually have missed anything.

I don't think PRODIGY deserves a legitimate effort at a proper review from me for the following reason.

I'm sure there's a more commonly-used name for it, but since I don't know what it is, I'll simply call PRODIGY a "parasite" movie. A parasite movie is one that is quickly produced at the same time a very similarly named, more "legitimate", big-budget movie is making the rounds in theaters. Right now, there's a horror picture called THE PRODIGY playing at theaters accompanied by a lot of promotional advertising, and now here we have PRODIGY released direct to video.

Another example current at the time of this writing is the digitally animated DUMBO in theaters and the direct to video junk-animated movie JUMBO trying to capitalize on it.

The apparent objective of such parasite movies is a slimy attempt to capitalize on the popularity and advertising promotion of the host movie and get people to watch their crummy knockoff by mistake.

A particularly irritating feature of PRODIGY is that it's a spiritual/theological message movie from a Christian production company, Visionary Film Productions (VF). The only conclusion I can come to is Visionary Film Productions is hoping to Trojan horse their religious message by engaging in this kind of trickery.

In the interest of full disclosure, while I'm not religious myself, I am generally pro-Christianity on a philosophical basis. To my way of thinking, the entire mechanism of parasite movies falls into the general category of lying which goes into the whole general heading of bearing false witness, and we know what the 10 Commandments has to say about THAT. The fact that a Christian production company would engage in this kind of deceptive behavior just helps to support what atheists have to say about Christianity.

And the cherry on top is that the primary "prophet" character in the movie has the most ear-bleeding going-through-puberty cracking voice I've ever heard. It makes you want to stab yourself in both ears with a sharp pencil.

Visionary Film Productions, and all the people that work for them, should be ashamed of themselves for engaging in this kind of duplicity. WWJD

>:(

The acting was good by the two main characters. The story had holes in it, the filming was ok, the story moved too quick at times. I did enjoy it but not everyone will.

This movie has bad movie cliche all over it. Bad acting, poor story, terrible ending it is a cliched throw away movie you will not want to see again. Nothing redeeming except at the very end when the credits roll and you realize it is over.

A two-hour movie that could have been done in 60 minutes (or less) and still achieved the same effect. It has a fatal flaw in extremely bad sound and overly-loud music in the last few minutes that made critical dialog very hard to understand. Anticlimactic in nature. Characters are cliche. Teen actor's voice is raspy and often difficult to understand. While the main story is mildly interesting, there is nothing original in this film, nor anything that makes it a "recommended watch". What starts out as an interesting premise turns into an excessively long yawner.