Or, What M. Night's Career Isn't.
Don't bother. Admit it, even you know this movie sucks, and you haven't seen it, either. Why do I know this for sure? Two reasons.
Reason #1: Mark Wahlberg.
Face the (gasp!) facts: Marky Mark isn't bankable. He hasn't done a single decent movie since I Heart Huckabees. A leave of absence in Hollywood is easily forgiven, especially if you have a creative excuse and your return is sudden and spectacular (i.e., Robert Downey Jr.). But when you go a presidential term without any notable credits despite constantly working,1 and gradually fading into a haze of dislikability (i.e., Wesley Snipes), studios should not gamble on you. You've passed your sell-by date. The uproar over Mark Wahlberg taking Ryan Gosling's place in The Lovely Bones is telling enough, despite Jackson's claims to have preferred Wahlberg all along2.
Reason #2: M. Night Shyamalan.
Let's review:
The Sixth Sense: five stars.
Unbreakable: four stars.
Signs: three and half stars (the half because this was on the cusp of pre-insane Mel Gibson).
The Village: three stars.
Lady in the Water: two stars.
I think you can see where this is going3.
Also, I have an ulterior motive.
I recently joined a website called Kinostat which allows users to estimate the 30-day domestic box office returns of soon-to-be-released films. You can't see other users' estimates, but once a film is released you can see the average estimates. In the case of The Happening, the collective is shooting for a $75 million. My original estimate was $31M, but when I heard that friends - friends, and I mean people who I show some semblance of respect - were thinking about seeing it, I bumped up to $48m just to be safe. If it does have some freaky twist4 it won't choke and drown in its own supernatural vomit like Lady in the Water.
And why do I care so much about Kinostat? Because the more accurate your predictions, the more likely it is they will hire you to screen scripts in development. That's the rumor, anyway.
So not only do I know this movie sucks, but I desperately want everyone else to know it too, and not see it. Do it because you love me!
- Sorry, but producing Entourage, worthy a show as it is, does not count. (And you have Jeremy Piven to thank for that, anyway.)
- Yeah, just like Brett Ratner was a more suitable director to put a cap on the X-Men trilogy.
- But who knows? There might be a freaky twist!
- A virus? Please. Way too obvious. You know what's really freaky? Zombies!
2 comments:
u suk--teh happining was the great movie of the sumer
you are a elittist i bet u went to sara laurence
-clif
ps. I completely loved this post, cj :p
Cori, The Happening was the best comedy of the summer. Even better than Get Smart, The Love Guru, and Meet Dave combined. Seriously, when Mark and Zooey and that little mute girl are trying to outrun the wind in the Pennsylvania countryside, and they watch as all these other people "running for their lives" suddenly stop and jump in front of the giant tractor lawnmower thing, it's pure genius! To say a moment like that is not comic gold is like saying Helen Keller jokes aren't funny. M. Night's made mass suicide bankable...I think he should direct a biopic about Jim Jones next!
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