Bug

I just watched this movie on Showtime. Quite by accident actually. If I wouldn't have only had 6 hrs of sleep for the past two days then I wouldn't have came home early from work. If I hadn't came home early from work I wouldn't have seen this movie. I wouldn't have known what I was missing, but I would've missed a lot.

That's the way this movie is. It's almost playing on the Kevin Bacon effect. That and causality (hence my verbiage above). Ever character is intertwined in some way or another. Action, reaction, interaction, non-interaction. This movie is just wonderful. I'm going to have to find a copy to buy.

As a producer of indie movies and a harsh critic of such, I have to say I loved this movie. It is funny and intelligent, well directed and entertaining. Hats off to the producers and directors for making a good one! I'll be watching for the next one. I gave it a 10.

I won't go over the details of the plot, since other's have mentioned them, and you can read them in the summary...

The supposed wonderful things that happen in this movie, due to the actions of others aren't all that wonderful. The stories contained in the film are just not exciting. I found the idea clever for a while, but it wore thin and started to get annoying after about an hour.

What's so great about these random acts? One guy is going for some girl who doesn't like him...another man is slowly losing his mind and is obsessed about germs, a couple- well, they actually turn out fairly well...the one guy loses his girlfriend and nothing else good happens to him. The trailer, which I only watched after the film, made it seem as tho wonderful things were happening to all these people, all caused by the small acts of others around them.

The fact is- there's nothing big happening to any of them...and these small, random acts don't lead to life changing events. Well, that's not exactly true...but, overall, no one learned some huge lesson, no one changed their entire personality. Nothing like that.

This is a hard movie to criticize, as it is a hard movie to explain to someone who hasn't seen it. It was just missing something for me. Sure, events around us affect our lives- this isn't a newsflash...but, I was just hoping for bigger things in the end- not a bunch of people loosely connected to one another going to Hawaii.

Worth watching twice because of the rapid-paced causal shifts among several compelling stories, "Bug" emerges as a wholly satisfying work of art that plays ever-optimistic love against myriad examples of frustrating reality.

My favorite characters are Wallace (John Carroll Lynch)whose overriding concern for life--from that of a cockroach to the airline passengers for whom he is partially responsible--frames the film; Olive (Christina Kirk), who spends considerable time creating surreal but tasty meals for her impossible husband Ernie (Chris Bauer); and Mitchell, a cable TV technician with unbounded trust in fortune cookie messages: "You will meet the girl of your dreams."

Against such optimism are the forces of quirky reality, all generated by actions of the characters: parking tickets, a clogged drain in a Chinese food/donut shop, TV disruption, a crushed auto fender, an obliterated dinner reservation that eventually results in cancellation of a Hawaiian vacation.

The film is funny: Olive getting drunk at a Chippendale performance, Johnston (Michael Hitchcock)as a customer service rep attempting to deal with an irate customer, the germ-obsessive Cyr (Brian Cox) facing a restaurant inspector, Dwight (Jamie Kennedy) reacting to his girlfriend's refusal to have children by writing hostile Chinese cookie fortunes: "Your girlfriend is lying to you" and the guy who falls asleep while manning a jackhammer because he spent the night looking for his girlfriend's missing cat.

A minor story with public cable access host (Darryl Theirse) and a local acting teacher reading from "The Boy in the Bubble" expresses the major theme: love comes from the heart.

"Bug" entertains on much the same level as "trains, planes and automobiles" but on a lower budget and with a fresher eye.

Not a bad movie. I cannot say that I found the comedy or acting great - but the plot was definitely worth while. It seems to me that many movies follow the same old formulas and scenes and events and that a unique plot for a movie is very rare indeed. Well, this movie is very unique and creative and does cause one to think.

Other movies with unique plots? When "Aliens" and "Jurassic Park" were each first released, I thought the uniqueness of each was great and mind expanding. Of course they were both so copied - including even through their own sequels - that later moviegoers may not remember they had some breakthroughs first.

Bug is such a break through - a new plot direction. Well worth seeing.