The Chosen One

When you think of Rob Schneider usually two things come to mind.

1. Small cameo in an Adam Sandler movie 2. Mediocre comedy good for a few laughs but overall a disaster However this movie is surprisingly compelling. It's not a comedy but simply a really nice story. Rob Schneider is a care salesman who is living a completely empty life. His wife has left him, he drinks all the time, he has no real friends and he is pretty much utterly frustrated with his life However things started changing when one day 3 holy man from a south American tribe and their interpreter Marissa played by the wonderful Caroline Gomez come to his life. They tell him that he is The Chose One who is meant to save their tribe.

He reacts like any one of us would react and dismisses them. However he is a truly nice guy and tries his best to help them feel comfortable and return back to their home. This slowly starts changing him and this is done in a really great way.

And of course there is Steve Buschemi who is great as always I didn't expect to like this movie or at most I expected a few cheap laughs. But I was wrong. It was a really good movie and I recommend it to everybody :)

Paul (Schneider) has lost his wife, is about to lose his job and tries to do himself in when he is visited by strange people from Colombia, South America who have anointed him as The Chosen One.

If One is going direct Oneself in a movie, One's name should be Clint Eastwood.

Schneider helped write, produce and direct himself in this barely watchable movie. One rule of radio is needed here: Let not DEAD AIR rule the airways. Here the acting was tentative by Schneider as though he was concentrating too much on watching himself direct and watching himself act all at the same time, and the result was too much hesitation when that wasn't called for. Yes, his character was going through some stuff, but the hesitations were like a football player consistently fumbling the ball. Doesn't look good. This is not the Rob Schneider I thought I would see. He needs to go back to Adam Sandler and beg for a job.

This is not a comedy, not a drama and is more of an outline of I don't know what in the sense: "let's see how this might go" , or "let's try this" and staying with those bonehead ideas. I saw where it could have been a comedy, but…………

The questions I had and Paul never asked in the beginning when he was told he was the Chosen One was: Why Me? followed up by: what do I have to do? And what am I supposed to do. Okay, he did ask why me? but didn't ask the other questions. No, we had to suffer through the movie to find out what he had to do to earn the title. Fair enough, but I still would have asked those other questions. Come on, tell me I am the Chosen One and you will hear the questions. Thought so. Am not, right? Thought so. Hmmmm..........

So later he climbs a tall building to put a hawk's nest back. But, when the hawk's nest was first removed, someone from the window above the nest quickly snatched up the nest. Why didn't Paul use that same window to put the nest back? Not much excitement in opening a window and plopping down the nest, is there? If a door or a way was blocked to do that, it should have been shown. It wasn't. He ended up climbing. Of course, we all wondered if he would fall.

John Schneider also helped produce this. I thought they may be brothers but cannot find that to be the case. But, that may not be the same John Schneider (Dukes of Hazard, Smallville) I am thinking of. Hey, I just learned there is another Christopher Lloyd (helps write for Modern Family TV show), and not the Back to the Future and Taxi guy. Hard to keep your eye on the ball these days. Reminds me of a story where almost everyone was named James Bond. Yes, they all said, "Bond, James Bond."

Violence: No. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Language: Not really, mild stuff and not much of it.

It's as if everyone in the film was acting in a comedy... except Rob Schneider, who played it totally straight. Not straight in a funny way like he was the straight man in a comedy. I mean he played it straight, as if he were in a serious drama. My reactions were; confusion, disappointment, irritation... and finally... well, after finally seeing that Rob was doing a darn fine job of dramatic acting (even though this was marketed as a comedy) I fast forwarded to the end, then ejected the DVD.

My final thought was, "Boy, he must have been mad at the director or something because it was like he intentionally ruined that movie by playing everything too straight." Rob is not a stupid guy. He had to have known he was screwing up what could have been a funny little comedy. Weird. I must say though, if his performance could be cut out and pasted into a drama it would have been very impressive.

I always thought Rob Schneider was a good actor - even in smaller roles he always shines. But "The Chosen One" shows he's got dramatic range. It's funny but not a full blown comedy. I liked it. Schneider co-wrote and directed it. There are a lot of great supporting roles in it like Steve Buscemi as his brother. When have you ever seen Steve Buscemi in a project that wasn't good? Holland Taylor from "Two and a Half Men" plays their mother. There are a lot of familiar faces in it. In a crowded marketplace of lowbrow comedies this one stands out as classy and heartfelt. Check it out. I thought "The Chosen One" was better than "Grown Ups" and some of the other R-rated summer comedies.

The Chosen One is quite simply terrible. I'd try to dress it up a bit for you, but the bottom line is if you value your time even slightly, then don't watch it. I'm no movie snob, I don't think a movie has to be life changing to be good, but this movie was so bad that it actually made me angry. The script is all over the place, completely disjointed, and when it comes down to brass tacks, quite simply boring. I'm finding it difficult to gather the motivation to explain to you why it's so bad, because its wasted so much of my time already. Suffice to say, one hour into the movie I was begging for something to happen, I forgave it at this point because it didn't bare the formulaic hallmarks of what you'd expect from Schneider. An hour and a half into the movie and I was wishing that it was formulaic...any form would do. It just switches from weak comedy to pointless, tenuous emotional tragedy and neither of these gets enough time to do a complete job. I reckon Schneider was attempting to convince the world and his peers that he was capable of more than cheap laughs, and this was his attempt to showcase his acting ability, and thats exactly how it came across; as a showcase, with no adjoining theme. After watching it, I couldn't sleep because I was worried that other people would have to sit through this utter shambles of a movie if I didn't do something to warn them off, so consider this a free favour. Watch it if you must, but don't say I didn't warn you.