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 Chris' Review: This is another one of those movies that had a really good shot at being great, but managed to screw it up. The movie starts out strong, as you've probably seen in the previews. Mom has son. Son disappears. Everyone starts forgetting he ever existed. The movie even takes it a step further and gives the mother a backlash of psychological problems that she has to see a doctor for. In their view, she has created a complete alternate universe after she had a miscarriage. So even her husband doesn't remember their son and everyone is trying to convince her that she's crazy. Even the audience is left wondering. This is a great idea! Whoever thought this up had one of those brilliant moments of pure genius. The entire thing reminded me of an M.Night Shayamalan script. Unfortunately, the owner of that great idea then sold it to a studio on a 30 second blurb and they turned it into complete crap. After the first 10 minutes of brilliance, it's all downhill from there. Julianne Moore (playing Telly) delivers a beautiful performance. She always seems just dazed enough that you buy that she feels like her waking life is a dream world. Like she can't understand why no one remembers her son. She's just dazed enough that you could believe that she is actually psychotic OR she is the only sane one. Walking that fine "Hamlet" line. Dominic West (Ash) really phoned it in, though. I never bought that he was that confused, never bought that he was that drunk, never bought that he was even worried about his daughter. He just kind of slept through each scene. I'm really wondering if he didn't just need a nap. The direction was one of brilliance, though. Ok, you're Joseph Ruben, and you've been handed this script that starts out great but then really falls apart... so you do your best, because, after all, it's your job. Even when handed crap, Ruben turns out a fine example of his directorial skill. There were a number of times that I saw a surprise coming... and it STILL managed to make me jump out of my seat...as well as EVERYONE else in the theater. None of that bogus scary music to set up the attack. The scenes gave a dark and dismal worldview, similar to the Matrix dreariness, adding to the feeling of hopelessness of our heroine. The flashbacks, in brilliant oranges and golds, were a bit too much, but definitely showed the contrasting feelings. Unfortunately for Ruben, there is only so much you can do with a script like this. I actually looked around and the original ending was even worse than the one offered up in the movie, if that is at all possible. The plot is full of holes, inconsistencies, and ideas that go nowhere. I mean, we have these all powerful beings that can come into your home, rearrange and replace your personal belongings, rearrange and replace your memories, and leave you none the wiser... but they decide to wallpaper over a huge clue to the past instead of erasing it completely? Were the Oompaloompas on overtime, or what? The aliens get shot at, cursed at, run over, pushed out of buildings... yet they remain completely unemotional about it. Spock had more of a reaction to insults. Yet when the end of the movie comes up, there's a dull spot, so let's have the alien yell really loud and break all the glass in the building because he's mad. He has the power to invade Telly's mind and probably do some serious mental damage, but what does he do instead? He picks her up by the throat and starts to strangle her. If it's so easy to erase peoples minds of events, why not throw the Police Captain or the captured NSA agent into an epileptic fit and make them forget the information that they had.... rather than whisk them up into the sky, cementing our heroine's belief that something is really rotten in Denmark. All in all, the ending of the movie is what really upset me and a lot of other people. It was the very definition of "Hollywood Ending". It doesn't make any sense and is completely inconsistent. The run of the movie had twist after twist, surprise after surprise... and then the ending was just like the writer got tired of finding interesting twists and decided to just make everyone feel good. Here... here's a nice little fluff ending that won't make you think, won't make you cry, won't make you do anything but go home and watch Leno. Soon after the monologue... it will be just that... forgotten. So I'm giving this movie two thumbs down... it has an excellent premise and some good acting... but it isn't nearly enough to save it. The movie just gets weirder and weirder until it ends with a sigh. I can't explain it any better than that.   Jim's Review: "The Forgotten" has all of the makings of a classic Hollywood thriller: Layered plot, frantic chases, mysterious government agents, unexplained occurrences, plot developments that raise more questions than they answer...If only the filmmakers hadn't decided to shoot the movie in the face and then rape the corpse in the last three minutes, I might not be freebasing Mylanta this week. "The Forgotten" stars the usually-considerable Julianne Moore as Telly Peretta, a woman in pain. Fourteen months ago, she put her nine-year-old son Sam on an airplane bound for parts unimportant, but carrying many children. The plane went down, taking the children on board along with it. Since then, Telly spends her days at home...Going through old photo albums, watching videotapes...Doing whatever she can to remember her son. Sure, it may not be healthy, but what's a mother to do? Because of her inability to accept Sam's passing and move on, Telly's husband Jim (a deadly flat Anthony Edwards) encourages her regular visits to Dr. Munce (Gary Sinise), a psychiatrist who specializes in grief counseling. However, Telly's outright refusal to live in the present and put Sam's death past her ensures that their sessions are largely fruitless. Still, they're working on it. Until the day a major setback occurs...One afternoon, all of Telly's touchstones have suddenly disappeared. The photo albums are empty. The videotapes are blank. All of Sam's things are gone. Even the private keepsakes she kept hidden from view are gone. Overnight, it's as if Sam had never existed. Even worse, in an emergency session with Jim and Dr. Munce, they break the news to her that...well...He never actually DID. Huh? They make the case to Telly that her memories of Sam, all of his things, and everything she's ever clung to are just figments of her imagination. She actually miscarried 6 months into her pregnancy, they say, and all of her memories were manufactured out of whole cloth due to her inability to deal with the loss. They had hoped to bring her around to this realization slowly, but it seems to have happened all at once. They sympathize with her reaction, but really, this is a breakthrough! Obviously, this doesn't sit too well with Telly. She had nine years with him! Keepsakes! Surely SOMEONE remembers him besides her. She's not CRAZY...is she?!? She had a SON! In a fit of rage and confusion, Telly flees the house. She makes a beeline for the library, where even the microfilm from the old newspapers that previously discussed the plane crash no longer reflect that the event even happened at all. At a loss, Telly finds her way to the home of Ash (Dominic West), a former pro Hockey player whose daughter was friends with Sam, and died in the same plane crash he did. He not only doesn't remember Telly, he claims he never had a daughter. However, at Telly's prompting, he finds a glimmer of recognition that soon explodes into a blaze of memory...He DID have a daughter, and she DID die in a plane crash. Unfortunately, this realization comes after he has already called the police to have this "stranger" removed from his property...And after the police who remove her are relieved of their custody of Telly by two NSA agents. SOMETHING is clearly going on. But what? Ash is able to rendezvous with Telly not long after helping her escape her government captors, and the two of them hit the road running, working with each other to find whatever information they can find concerning their children. Tantalizing clues emerge. Every lead they discover and explore leads to more confusion, more trails. Even a hostage NSA agent that they overcome, hogtie and interrogate leaves them with more questions than answers. Eventually, a sympathetic police captain (a thoroughly wasted Alfre Woodard) makes up her mind to find them and offer her assistance. It's still not enough. The larger picture seems to be so staggering that there's simply no way it can be completely comprehended by people only seeing a few puzzle pieces at a time. Nevertheless, once Telly and Ash begin to close in on the truth about what's happened to their kids, the film appears (despite glaring and unforgivable plot holes) to be building to an exciting (if messy) conclusion. The truth is revealed...and it's so out there, so unbelievable that the audience is thrown for a loop. It's bizarre and crazy and intriguing and the storyline is spinning out of control but it's at least EXCITING and oh my gosh this could end any number of ways that would really pull all of these disparate plot elements together and I... Then the unforgivable happens. So help me god, if I EVER meet the Hollywood exec who decided that "focus groups" were a dandy idea, I'm going to kick him in the testicles so hard that he'll be wheelchair-bound for a decade. Who figured that handing over the reins of storytelling to the lowest common denominator of drooling, culture-free mongoloids would make for better films? The ridiculous, deus ex machina tacked-on happy ending that force-feeds people (who've been led an entirely different direction for two hours) a nice, soothing shovelful of pabulum in order that they leave the theatre feeling fat, happy and satisfied has become such a common occurrence at the multiplex that I've learned to save enough soda to take aspirin afterwards...Just in case. "The Forgotten" is now up there with "Far and Away" as a glaring case-in-point. In its final moments, this movie made me so goddamned angry that I could barely contain myself. Completely ignorant of larger issues, storyline, and anything resembling balance, the conclusion of "The Forgotten" violates its own premise so thoroughly that I wanted to scream. Loudly. And for a long time. By the time the credits rolled, I not only had thought of a dozen more suitable endings for the film that would have worked a thousand times better, but I thoroughly hated Moore's heroine and her narrow-minded, short-sighted, exclusionary devotion. Her wholesale acceptance of the film's resolution in the face of the events it took to get there was insultingly played. Everything's okay! Well, no...Not really. Are you suddenly in a different film than the one we just spent our evening watching? Surely you remember all of the shit that just happened! I understand you're pleased with the outcome, but does one make up for the other? Knowing what you do, can you LIVE in this world? Will you ever have a moment's peace? Are you really so ignorant as to think that just because this one element worked out that things will ever be the same? Does your epilogue cancel the reality of the journey? If it does, you're nuttier now than anyone ever even THOUGHT you were at any other point in the film! Oh...We don't want to CHALLENGE our audience, heavens no! Let's lob them a hair-tearingly, frustratingly stupid, but happy coda so they feel warm and fuzzy inside! Sure, it's intelligence-insulting, and ridiculously contrived, but we certainly don't want to make them feel SAD! *Hugz!* How ironic that the focus group chimps obviously responsible for so many a revolting denouement can neither spell nor pronounce the word. I'm giving "The Forgotten" seven thumbs down. The closure this film offers to the potentially-interesting story it sets up is SO awful, SO disgusting, SO downright maddening that when weighed against the rest of the film, it completely negates the entirety of the experience. In fact, I'm reminded of the old grade-school story problems where Jack has ten apples, and then Sally takes away thirteen. In retrospect, the two hours I spent watching "The Forgotten" would've been better spent chewing aluminum foil. This film is a monstrous pile of wasted opportunity, and everyone involved ought to be deeply ashamed. There are only two reasons that this movie isn't scoring worse with me: One, there are some dastardly cool "gotcha" moments (which ultimately only serve to make the ending even more frustrating, being as there were SOME good ideas at work). And two, no matter how horrible "The Forgotten" turned out to be, it's still not anywhere near as bad as "Van Helsing." BackHome - Info - Reviews - Map - Message Board - Photo Album |
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