jeomo

I can't imagine hating this movie. There isn't enough to it to hate. Not enough to it to like very much, either, but there are plenty of much, much worse movies out there. I was looking for very mild entertainment to watch at home while I worked on some tedious chores, and I found this movie very mildly entertaining.

I found the question of why, given its cast, this movie was so very mildly entertaining to be part of the entertainment to be found in watching it. I didn't come up with an answer to that question, so I moved on to trying to describe "very mildly" as it applies to this movie.

What I finally came up with is...imagine the cast and crew have gathered before beginning to make the movie. The actors are relaxing and chatting amongst themselves, talking shop, catching up. The crew is working on camera angles and lighting, so, every now and then, one of them says something like, "Hey Mary and Craig, could you come over and walk through the scene where X happens. Mary and Craig obliging break off their socializing and walk through the scene. They are both strong actors, so even as a walk-through, they don't do it badly. But they don't do it well, because they aren't trying to actually do the scene. They are just walking through it for the crew.

They don't have a script yet. We know this because a script for a comedy has a lot of lines and incidents that are intended to be funny and they either succeed or fall flat, and this movie didn't seem to have either. So no script, just an outline of the scene. The actors might have tried to have fun with it and improvise, which any of these actors could have done ably, but their minds are on the socializing they were doing and will be returning to shortly, so they don't try to improvise, they just talk their way through it.

It was like that. Still, if I had the opportunity to watch this cast do exactly that, I wouldn't hate it. I would find it very mildly entertaining. And that's how I found this movie.

The plot is, as other reviewers noted, cheesy, ridiculous, etc. But hey, it's a comedy. Or, had they gotten around to actually making it, it was supposed to be a comedy, not a documentary.

Why a movie with this cast never got around to actually being made, but only walked through, remains a mystery to me.

I noticed a lot of the reviews associated with high ratings were posted by people who had no great expectations going in. If you don't, you'll probably be impressed. If you expect another Blade Runner or Payback, you'll probably be woefully disappointed.

This movie was good in all the ways that those who liked it have said it was good. It was also "bad" in the ways that those who didn't like it say it was. It was done on a modest budget, so special effects, while respectable, are not going to blow you away. It leans more toward cerebral than adrenal, so action scenes are unlikely to get your adrenalin pumping. The story line may make you think, though. If you watch a lot of these types of films, you will not find the plot to be that original, but then there is nothing new under the sun. They put together a good solid story, regardless. And there is always more than one way for these stories to come out. This one didn't give itself away.

I gave it a 6 compared to all movies. If I were to compare to other sci fi films made on similar budgets, I'd rate it an 8.