Prototype

I saw this quite a few years ago, probably on a Friday night when I had nothing better to do and had no desire to hit the bars--which would have been a better option, considering the movie. I remember being markedly unimpressed by the film, so much so that I woke up at one point and thought, Man is this thing ever gonna end? I remember seeing Kato Kaelin's name in the end credits, but never had the desire to rewind it and look for him. There aren't many films I have fallen asleep during, particularly early in the evening after a good night's rest, but this thing was like a Valium to a guy on Speed. Highly recommended as a curative if you are an insomniac.

Throughout the movie, I kept on thinking to myself, "This movie would have been a lot better if it were an anime." It has all the features of an anime and could have been a pretty good one, but it's just that it didn't work out too well with live action. It was easy to notice that the director had some nice ideas, with the colors and all, but it just didn't work out for him. To date, the only movies I've seen that have successfully portrayed a good anime in live action form are "Romeo Must Die," "The Matrix," and "Pi."

You know sometimes you're wandering through Youtube looking for groovy old scifi movies (that hark back to the days when a 40 MB hard drive was apparently something to get excited about) and you find yourself watching something that you then keep watching because you're convinced at some point the writer(s) will remember to inject a plot and some decent dialogue into the thing?

Yeahhh. That was me watching this ... and wondering why, at the 55 minute mark (a) nothing of note had happened, (b) I had no idea how any of the characters related to one another, (c) some wheelchair dude with an uber mullet was pouting a lot because his skanky gf wasn't putting out - coz he was in a wheelchair I think?, and (d) where this was all going... because it felt kinda like nowhere.

Luckily there's an option to skip ahead in small jumps, which I started doing at the 62 minute mark just to get some sort of closure before heading off to watch something actually entertaining.

Good luck. Recommended if you can't sleep...

I consider myself to be a major contender in the terms of low budget science fiction, i'm not one to brag but when I was a teenager, the movie clerk would say that I was keeping him in business by renting the obscure flicks that basically came and went without much of an impression. Prototype X29A (Which I guess is titled Prototype) is a movie that reminded me a lot like the equally dull Nemesis, in that it seems to labor to tell a story that has lots of heart and excitement but fails in most regards. Actually there are some okay moments that surface, for one of the characters is admittedly likable. The guy in a wheelchair has our sympathy, he wants to become a robot so he can have his true love but this is all abandoned for stupid quirkiness which add little to the story and nothing that is interesting. Plus the whole rebel underground subplot and the totalitarian government are clichés borrowed from Albert Pyun. I actually saw Prototype X29A in a double-bill with ROTOR, at least ROTOR (While admittedly far worse) was hilarious to watch. This one was just a decorated bore with little merit.

*1/2 out of 4-(Poor)

Very rarely does there come a movie which I consider to be completely without merit. I even granted Godzilla (1998) some points just for being a fun night out. But this movie... boring in a very special way. If you'd like a guaranteed cure for insomnia, feel free to check it out!