2/10
Garbage Like This Gives Modern Films A Bad Name
3 July 2007
It's movies like this that give modern-day films a reputation as "garbage," especially among classic-film lovers. I try to defend today's movies to them when they tell me today's movies are all morally bankrupt. Well, in this case, I have no rebuttal. I agree, this is another example of a modern effort that puts too much stock on the sleaze and winds up on the weak side of being classy. It's also another good example of a PG-13 movie that should have been rated "R." There are tons of examples of that in the last 15 years. Parents: be more leery of PG-13 than another rating.

Usually, a movie that features crime and comedy is going to be either really good or really bad, depending on the quality of the jokes. Here, very little was funny and by halfway, I could care less about the crime angle. If you are to inject humor into a heist story, make sure it works, or you are going to wind up with a mess like this. Also, the movie seemed to be more of an environmental propaganda piece than anything else. Did Al Gore have a hand in this? It would explain how boring this wound up and all the bias. It just looks as if the filmmakers didn't know what direction go to and wound up with a sub-par performance in all the categories.

Owen Wilson plays a smart-ass surfer dude. If his character "Jack Ryan" is the hero of this film, it's no wonder I got turned off in a hurry. I didn't find him a "likable guy," as some others did: just a wise guy who had the cute answers to everything. I have found Wilson to be similar to the crime-comedy genre: he's either very entertaining or very annoying.

Speaking of actors, I was very disappointed to see two of my favorites - Gary Sinise and Morgan Freeman - involved with this turkey.

I don't blame Wilson for everything. He didn't write the dialog. He didn't cast Sara Foster as the lead female. He didn't write a screenplay in which none of the characters are likable enough for us to care about them. At least I have company as I see most other reviewers here thought this movie stunk, too.
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