20 Years After

I read the comments on this movie here before I saw it, so I expected nothing - and was pleasantly surprised. It's actually not that bad, suffers the same flaws that bothered nobody in "Children of Men".

Yes, the acting is sometimes bad, but not without it's moments: Reg E. Cathey gave a good performance, for instance. Acting is not the problem of this movie; directing and sound (effects) are.

As I said, I was pleasantly surprised and watched all through it, which I don't do on REALLY bad flicks. I'm giving it 4/10 because it had it's moments but I couldn't honestly recommend this to any of my friends (unless there is really nothing else at hand), who are not such nutters about movies as I am.

The plot: A DJ, a pregnant woman, and some others try to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.

I don't know. I tried to give this film a chance. I saw all the negative reviews, and I thought to myself, "Maybe I'll like it. I don't mind slow pacing or low budgets, and I often like existential dramas." However, this was just too much to take. For vast stretches of time, nothing happens except people talking cryptically about stuff I really didn't care about. The music really annoyed me, but I figured they would move on from playing this horrible country music, eventually -- but, no, it just kept going on and on. I glanced at my screen and saw there was still another 30 minutes left. I admit it. I bailed. I couldn't take it any more. No more pointless dialogue about mystical crap, detestable music, or boring characters.

The plot is a ripoff of Children of Men, the actors are from TV shows, and the music will annoy anyone under 60. I really don't know who this film was made for, but it wasn't made for people like me. I guess it's meant to be an uplifting story about plucky survivors and their metaphysical journey to rediscover America, which has been blah blah blah. Who cares? I sure don't. It takes the worst of New Age hippies and low budget, B movies, throws them together, and mixes in a bunch of country music. Ugh. Truthfully, I would have preferred yet another mindless ripoff of Mad Max than this.

I've read a lot of the reviews for this movie and I believe it has been judged a little too harshly.There are far worse movies out there than this but hey,that's other reviewers opinions and I respect that.

This is yet another low budget,after the apocalypse effort that for a change actually has actors that act and not just turn up for the pay cheque.

As the title suggests,this is set 20 years after the apocalypse,that had forced people to live underground in basements,bunkers and caves.Now,in a slowly recovering world,people are venturing up and outwards in an effort to continue civilisation. We have the seemingly obligatory,(for movies of this type) "radio" man Joshua,playing music and messages from his bunker,to anybody left in the world with equipment to hear him. We have pregnant Sarah,who's husband was killed 6 months before,with her mother Margaret,surviving in an abandoned basement,until the homes real owner Samuel arrives on the scene and convinces them to venture forth to find or start a better life. And we have the also obligatory bad guys,this time searching for the as yet unborn baby.

So what was it that let this movie down?

It certainly wasn't the acting.Whilst not overly convincing,everyone plays their part reasonably well and special mention should go to Reg E. Cathey as Samuel as a stand out (though he doesn't get enough screen time here). Some of the bad guys/henchmen were a bit naff but nothing awful. Even the minimal action scenes were done reasonably well.

What lets this one down is the fact that so much that happens doesn't make a lot of sense.

No explanation is made as to why the bad guys want the baby. One of the bad guys is actually pregnant Sarah's brother.He has no idea the baby he is searching for is his sisters.Why?No back story or explanation is given. Apparently Sarah is THE only pregnant woman left despite the fact there are plenty of seemingly healthy men and women left.Why?

There were many head scratching moments......

However,this was for me still a watchable movie despite it's flaws and I remained reasonably entertained until the end.

So to quote a many repeated IMDb phrase from so many reviews......

Not the best,but very far from being the worst.

First off I had to fill out a app here to comment on this as this movie is terrible. The people that made this should be ashamed of themselves including every actor, the writer(s), director, and who ever produced this and said they would invest in this. It really didn't make any sense. The person who wrote this was trying so hard to make the dialog artistic that the entire screenplay and interaction of the characters is painful to watch. Because of a nuclear blast and a some type of weather disaster (of which they don't name or explain in the movie) technology such as automobiles, computers, telephones cease to exist. Oh and everyone in the future becomes a trashy hippie according to this film. Not to mention you will notice that the entire movie is filmed in the same field. The lowest you can rate a movie here is a ONE which this movie did not deserve.

I like post-apocalyptic fiction so I thought this movie would be at least marginally entertaining. Things start well but the arrival of the jolly jester was when the alarm bells started ringing for me. All of a sudden the whole story turns limper than a puppets handshake and the violin rises to an annoying pitch and stays there till the credits.

My main problem with this film is that while it presents you with some interesting imagery the story has all the depth and meaning of a dirty fart. I still can't get over that pathetic jester-doctor character, was that supposed to be heart warming? Were we supposed to be spellbound by his juggling, unexplained magical antics and wise words? Because I wasn't, I was just irritated to realise that the guy who designed the cover for this movie had more imagination than the people making it.

Also, and this is a cheap shot, that woman with the ginger hair (Diane Salinger) looks like The Predator with his helmet off.