The Final Cut
There's nothing more depressing than seeing a really incredible concept for a movie go to waste. Omar Naim had a really great idea and, when trying to adapt it to a screenplay, just completely failed. The film itself is an absolute mess! I absolutely love Robin Williams, especially when he's doing stuff like Good Will Hunting or One Hour Photo type performances, but here he's just completely... bland! I mean, he's supposed to be morose, he's a sineater for Christ's sake! How would you feel if you had taken on the entire memories of person after person? In the hands of a more competent director, he might have really knocked this one out of the park. And why is Mira Sorvino sleeping with him! THAT is the great mystery of this film, this completely creepy dude can hook up with Mira Sorvino. What was that all about? It made no sense.... like most of the movie. And the ending was just plain ridiculous, considering that the main conflict of the film was hardly compelling and the rising action consisted of the five minutes before the last scene. "Is that it?!" I asked myself. And it was.
Now, this is when I realized that if Omar Naim had sold his idea and let someone else write it and someone else direct it, this could have been a great film. It deals with the same kind of moral issues that Minority Report and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and those issues are really, really interesting. To me, at least, and if you look at those movies, you'll see that they were both really successful and extraordinary films. I feel that if Stephen Spielberg had directed this it could have been really incredible, and I think that is what makes this film so bad. The screenplay is half-assed and Naim's "vision" isn't nearly organized or compelling enough to make this film interesting. It's got some great moments, like the way our memories the way we remember them are sometimes different from the way they actually happened, and the immorality of giving an unborn baby one of the life recording implants.
Great concept. Terrible film.
There's nothing more depressing than seeing a really incredible concept for a movie go to waste. Omar Naim had a really great idea and, when trying to adapt it to a screenplay, just completely failed. The film itself is an absolute mess! I absolutely love Robin Williams, especially when he's doing stuff like Good Will Hunting or One Hour Photo type performances, but here he's just completely... bland! I mean, he's supposed to be morose, he's a sineater for Christ's sake! How would you feel if you had taken on the entire memories of person after person? In the hands of a more competent director, he might have really knocked this one out of the park. And why is Mira Sorvino sleeping with him! THAT is the great mystery of this film, this completely creepy dude can hook up with Mira Sorvino. What was that all about? It made no sense.... like most of the movie. And the ending was just plain ridiculous, considering that the main conflict of the film was hardly compelling and the rising action consisted of the five minutes before the last scene. "Is that it?!" I asked myself. And it was.
Now, this is when I realized that if Omar Naim had sold his idea and let someone else write it and someone else direct it, this could have been a great film. It deals with the same kind of moral issues that Minority Report and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and those issues are really, really interesting. To me, at least, and if you look at those movies, you'll see that they were both really successful and extraordinary films. I feel that if Stephen Spielberg had directed this it could have been really incredible, and I think that is what makes this film so bad. The screenplay is half-assed and Naim's "vision" isn't nearly organized or compelling enough to make this film interesting. It's got some great moments, like the way our memories the way we remember them are sometimes different from the way they actually happened, and the immorality of giving an unborn baby one of the life recording implants.
Great concept. Terrible film.
posted by Ian at 2:55 PM
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