Evan Almighty and 1408

Another double feature day.

First up, Evan Almighty. At 200 some million dollars, I'm sad to report that this film is simply not good. It just is not very funny, and being a comedy, that's not a thing to be.

I love Steve Carell, and will admit that the only reason I went and saw the film was that he was in it. But the thing is, the film is so uneven in it's treatment that it becomes a useless reason to go see the film because he's in it. He's in it all the time for about 2/3rds of the movie, yes. But the last 1/3rd or so of the film is almost entirely given over to special effects that really do nothing but give the impression that the film is very confused over whether it's a comedy or an epic disaster film. He then shows up in the last 5 minutes or so, but the extreme sparsity of his presence really is felt. At 95 minutes or so, that's a sizable portion that's very empty.

The other sad part is that he's not given really anything to work with! He's almost entirely not funny in this film, which is just devastating. All of the funny parts are apart of the trailer. Every single one of them. What the audience is left to laugh with due to not having seen it before is basically Evan getting his Noah outfit, birds shitting on people, Evan dancing, and then some awkward uber-suck up that works for Evan's congressional office.

The other reason to see it is Morgan Freeman. Even in a bit role, his lack of screen time compared to Bruce Almighty is still felt. He basically has the introductory part, a few glimpses seen convincing Evan, a talking part with Evan's wife, and then the very end of the film for about a minute and a half. That's it. More events are covered by god giving notes to Evan than scenes where Freeman appears physically. It just sucks. And even worse is that Freeman in a few instances did what I thought was impossible: made me cringe seeing him do his job. For a few seconds in some of his scenes, I can't tell if he's just misreading his role and what he should deliver or only appearing in the film through some contractual obligation. The end of the film makes me doubt the latter, since over the credits it's a montage of shots showing what is obvious enjoyment on the set by the crew and Freeman is featured a lot there. But jeez, he's cut to such a limited time, and gives a mediocre performance which is double fucking a terrific actor.

The final part that drags down the movie's comedy, is that it's a one-joke affair (grammatically I'm sure I'm supposed to put "an" there but it sounds fucking like murder when I say it). The entire comedic aspect revolves around either the Noah story or whatever slapstick they can toss in. There's not a lot of depth here to work with. Bruce Almighty had the entire aspect of Christian theology to work with -- Evan Almighty has one story from the Old Testament. You can see how it would wear out.

While the movie obviously has religious aspects (uh, it's a bible story, dumbass!), these are dealt with in what can only be said to be awkward ways. Even the introduction that strange things are going to happen is just weird the way it plays out. Evan and his wife discuss praying, she says that since he's now a congressman and wanting to change the world he should pray since he'll need all the help he can get. It's worked out as what I'd describe as a strained situation. Evan then praying in the next scene is also slightly strained, but not as much. All of this gets even weirder as when the story moves along, it is of course his wife that is having difficulty believing what is going on. Which is a bit of a strange way to take things since she was the one pushing for it originally and going on about prayer and faith. It's not as if she was saying believe in god or damn what's coming and then turned around and said she didn't believe in god for 40 minutes straight, but it's of a weaker and similar nature.

The most unreadable aspect is the political implications for the film. I view it as much too lighthearted to have any serious political message or subtext, but I can't deny that one can easily find such here. Especially creationists, who would view what happens as history come again. But the obvious message one can draw from this might be that we need more religion in our political process, since that is what ultimately causes Evan to do the right thing and turn against the bad bill that John Goodman's character tries to make Evan support. Once again, I doubt the takeaway message of the film is supposed to be "Support the Christian Right!", the gray area being that it's also about an environmental issue not some other great moral one like abortion or some such, but that subtext can be drawn from the film. You can even go further and say that possible religion in our government is necessary because it's always brought about by a "wave" of support. I mean if people make out xenophobic and bigoted allusions from 300, just imagine what the fuck they'll do with this.

As if all this wasn't bad enough, the special effects mostly sucked. There were a lot of animals that were live-action, but mostly birds were CGI in outside areas, and they were transparently fake. Just terrible. The epic disaster sequence at the end wasn't anything great either, though the flooding of a river/valley area due to a collapsing dam was impressive for what was shown.

So if you feel inclined, I'd suggest against seeing it.

Next up, 1408. Much better. John Cusack stars as a paranormal experiencer, essentially, going around to supposedly haunted locations and for his recent book hotel rooms and rating them. Thing is, every place he's gone to has been basically bogus. He's never experienced anything paranormal, and as he says the only place you want to go to guarantee a paranormal experience is to go to Orlando, Florida. He's sent a postcard from the Dolphin Hotel in New York by someone (who did it is never explained; they might have shown a name/address on the card, but I missed it) with a simple message: "Don't go in room 1408." Arriving at the hotel, he finally stays over night in the room way beyond the strong insistence of Samuel L. Jackson as the manager, who's real motivation is simply stated that he doesn't want to clean up the mess because no one has lasted longer than an hour.

Things, of course, get weird and "real." It's a ghost story, so right off the bat you should know going in that it's much more cerebral and atmospheric rather than horror based. The film does a very good (if when thinking about it, not too experimental in mechanism) job of showing that this place is fucked up. Beginning with the radio turning on by itself to blare the Carpenter's "We've Only Just Begun" as well as the appearance of some hotel mints that weren't there before. What I think is the most effective usage is one of the first, and one of the simplest: the clock turning from a normal setting to a countdown of an hour. Nobody lasts more.... Simple, but a nice touch. Things go more and more out of the plane of reality in the cases of electronic-looking ghosts appearing and killing themselves, the television showing previous recordings of Cusack's family life (which is loaded with emotional baggage after the death of his daughter), the room switching from 80-90 degrees heat to -15 or so, the fridge opening up to be a portal to converse with Samuel L. Jackson again for a bit, trying to go out the window to walk to another one only to find that the only two windows are his own room's, to the fire-escape map changing so that his room is the only one present on it, to creepy-crawlies in the ceiling vents cutting off escape, to phones melting as if wax before re-appearing whole, to the entire fucking room getting flooded with water. Oh, and the reappearance of his dead daughter, before turning to ash in his arms. Most of the "scares" are of this nature -- except for a few repeating instances that are basically non-sequiturs where a person with some type of killing instrument swipes at Cusack from wherever only to be shown to never having truly been there (apparently).

The film does great for the first 70-75 minutes of this 94 minute film, but then things have to take a break as we get a false ending. Giving the impression that he's left the room and re-entered life as it was entirely all a hallucination/dream from nearly drowning while surfing, the film wastes probably 10 minutes before going back into it again for the conclusion.

The thing with false endings though, is that you can't show in the trailer material that comes after them. It sets up the situation where you know the film is not over because we haven't seen ____ shot. Sure, it's possible it was removed from the film, but even so it puts you on guard for the more likely outcome that it's just to come. And since this in question dealt with his dead daughter (IE: the entire meeting scene), it's unlikely they would just cut such an integral part of the story without showing it before the false ending (they show it after the false ending, of course).

It also really just gives the impression that you don't know how to end the film. You give one ending, showing it to be false, to give another. If the false ending, everything is shown to be a hallucination/dream -- in the real ending, everything is shown to be real. Or at least that's the more likely situation. Another possible alternative is that Cusack's wife is now caught in the room too, and we're now seeing things about her (but, frankly, I object to that on the grounds that it makes a shot and line by Jackson to be absolutely fucking useless and no point to it at all).

So, the ending is a bit weak. That's sad, but it seems the film built up expectations it couldn't live up to so it gives the impression it was inevitable. The atmospheric and tone of the film is handed in a very good way, and Cusack and Jackson (even though he's in it very little) both give good performances.

The major downside is what the film cannot be held responsible for: the fucking audience. The audience made me sympathize entirely with John Cusack.

I sure as hell felt like I was in a room of supernatural torture for over an hour and could not escape.

Picture this. Vinnie and I got into the theatre and sat down in roughly the same spots we always try to get: essentially, the 4-5 rows (of variable position) of the center audience, and slightly to the right of the center of those center rows. (My rationale is two fold -- 1. Because they are only minimally different from the center-center seats; 2. You're not surrounded by people, because they either move on seeing that the usual "2-seat space" or so is not favorable to them on one side. This way you can also get easier access to the bathrooms if you need to.) About two rows above us, and slightly to our right (if we're facing the screen), there is a group of about 4 or 5 girls, roughly 13-16. They're talking non-stop. Granted, this is before even the commercials and trailers start, but young girls in a group during a scary movie is not a place you want to sit by. They always talk. Always.

So, before the movie starts, we get up and move to new seats, which now are sadly in the nosebleed section. Second row of seats from the very back of the theatre, and like 2 seats in from the isles. The perspective is not optimal, and you can always be reminded you're in the theatre since you see too little screen and too much wall. But, trailers are starting. And in walks a group of 8, 4 guys and 4 girls. They come all the way up to our row, but go on the opposite side of the isle, into those smaller skinnier rows of 4 seats that run down the side (the two isles divide the seating into roughly three sections, the center, and two other sections on the opposite sides of each isle). Ok, whatever, they're a bit older, probably 17-20. Oh, but no! They have to talk non-stop during the trailers. Not just whispered talk, I mean talking over the fucking trailers about stupid shit like what they did last night and goofing off with one of those fucking keychain flashlights. Time to move again.

This time we move to the exact opposite: we're no longer sitting in stadium seating, we're on the small rows of floor seating near the front of the screen. We're like the second row of this seating in front from whence the stadium seating begins. Better perspective (a bit too close, but better than too far), and so the movie begins. And then we notice three things.

1. The older couple behind me and to my left a few seats, the man of which had some type of chest cold. Ok, I can deal with that, I just don't want to get coughed or sneezed on. Can hardly blame the guy if he keeps it to a minimum. But he doesn't. Snorts, hacks, coughs, the whole works -- the deep kind of this stuff, where you wonder whether you're bringing up torn off pieces of the interior of your lungs. Added to this, throughout the entire movie at specific instances he turned into one of those fucking "Hmmm!" guys.

2. He ties for asshole with the woman behind me and to my right a bit (she was still to the right of Vinnie, who was sitting at my right), who at least 25 times in the film exploded into laughter. That's fine for funny parts, but, hey, there aren't many instances of rip-roaring laughter in a suspense film. Once instance where John Cusack walks into the room's bathroom and apparently meets his father in some radically different looking bathroom caused her to burst out a peal of laughter load enough that I couldn't hear what the fuck his father said so the scene had no importance to me. Oh, and did I mention that this is a suspense film? So it's mostly a quiet film in many parts. Yeah, it seems those instances we're always roaringly fucking hilarious to this bitch. Ok, I get it. Some people go through their fear/scare mechanisms by laughter or humor. But you don't have to try to top opera singers for high fucking octaves here. Tone it down.

3. I thankfully wasn't cursed with the guy who sat right behind Vinnie (apparently with the hyena-lady) and didn't hear much of him, because if I did I would've probably killed the man with everything else. He was a toe-tapper. Where we were sitting meant that the row behind us was the beginning of the slow incline of the stadium seating, so it was a concrete slab, not floor tiles. And this guy was constantly tapping his foot throughout the film, and kicked Vinnie's seat several times. He addressed the problem at least four times by mentioning it to the guy, but he just kept doing it. Vinnie even said that the fucker smiled when he turned around the second time.

How is it that people can spend so much fucking money to go to the movies, and not do anything but act like they're outside playing in a field? Sit down, shut up, chew with your mouth closed, and watch the fucking movie. That's what you're there for; that's what I'm here for. I want to enjoy the damn movie, and you're fucking things up for me and other people.

I really do think we need to start administering some type of movie audience license. You need to be able to do this, this, and this. They're not hard, but the fuckheads who can't do them won't be let in, and those who get reported doing such will be fined. Sure abridgment of freedom, but fuck it, I want to enjoy a damn movie without feeling the urge to strangle people who can't behave like a human fucking being.