I hate this..
I saw this film at it's world premier at the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose last night..
I come to IMDb, and I find a virgin user's comment section...
And I have to write a negative review, dammit.
I wanted to like this film... and for the first 45 minutes or so, I was moderately captivated.. All the symbolism.. The guessing at what was really happening with the constant flashback.. The weirdness of the hospital setting... The *hot* nurse..
But then they had to do what a film that can possibly be about the internal struggle of a dying man has the opportunity to do: they blatantly ripped off Jacob's Ladder. After somehow convincing his nurse (in the stripper stiletto heels no less) to wheel him into the condemned section of the hospital, he's taken on a Mr. Toad's Wild Ride down hallways past operating rooms with grotesque liposuction surgeries, weird crazy ladies nursing babies..... THE SAME FRICKIN' SCENE AS JACOB'S LADDER... Oh wait, he's on a gurney in JL and in this thing it's a wheelchair....
Anywho... from that point on, I just could not take this film seriously at all.. I found myself laughing at what I suppose (based on the silence in the rest of the theater, with the exception of that one guy snoring) were "inappropriate" times.. It just dragged on and on with this standard "is this happening or not?" motif... Even the gratuitous sex scene with the nurse and the gratuitous violence of Mandingo's scene did not rekindle my interest. Clearly there are about 4 or 5 political messages being bantered about here as well (the state of healthcare in the US, obsequious insurance practices, the Terri Schiavo debacle), but they're just too obvious to be terribly effective. And speaking as a medical professional, there were major liberties taken with some of the healthcare aspects here as well.. No one can talk when they're intubated, dammit! Okay, so at this point, I'm nitpicking I suppose.. Did I mention that the music's pretty terrible as well? Alright... so I hated this movie... And according to IMDb, there's a *152 minute* version of this thing as well??? As if suffering through 111 minutes wasn't bad enough. If only I'd stuck around after A Dog's Breakfast, waded through the line of enthralled female sci-fi fans and gotten to meet David Hewlett.. Then I could have just gone home and watched Jacob's Ladder.
Calgon, take me away! pt
I saw this film at it's world premier at the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose last night..
I come to IMDb, and I find a virgin user's comment section...
And I have to write a negative review, dammit.
I wanted to like this film... and for the first 45 minutes or so, I was moderately captivated.. All the symbolism.. The guessing at what was really happening with the constant flashback.. The weirdness of the hospital setting... The *hot* nurse..
But then they had to do what a film that can possibly be about the internal struggle of a dying man has the opportunity to do: they blatantly ripped off Jacob's Ladder. After somehow convincing his nurse (in the stripper stiletto heels no less) to wheel him into the condemned section of the hospital, he's taken on a Mr. Toad's Wild Ride down hallways past operating rooms with grotesque liposuction surgeries, weird crazy ladies nursing babies..... THE SAME FRICKIN' SCENE AS JACOB'S LADDER... Oh wait, he's on a gurney in JL and in this thing it's a wheelchair....
Anywho... from that point on, I just could not take this film seriously at all.. I found myself laughing at what I suppose (based on the silence in the rest of the theater, with the exception of that one guy snoring) were "inappropriate" times.. It just dragged on and on with this standard "is this happening or not?" motif... Even the gratuitous sex scene with the nurse and the gratuitous violence of Mandingo's scene did not rekindle my interest. Clearly there are about 4 or 5 political messages being bantered about here as well (the state of healthcare in the US, obsequious insurance practices, the Terri Schiavo debacle), but they're just too obvious to be terribly effective. And speaking as a medical professional, there were major liberties taken with some of the healthcare aspects here as well.. No one can talk when they're intubated, dammit! Okay, so at this point, I'm nitpicking I suppose.. Did I mention that the music's pretty terrible as well? Alright... so I hated this movie... And according to IMDb, there's a *152 minute* version of this thing as well??? As if suffering through 111 minutes wasn't bad enough. If only I'd stuck around after A Dog's Breakfast, waded through the line of enthralled female sci-fi fans and gotten to meet David Hewlett.. Then I could have just gone home and watched Jacob's Ladder.
Calgon, take me away! pt