Why can't they make good SF movies?

12/03/2005 05:43:00 p.m.

So last night I got an email from a friend of mine (let's call him Kevin, since that's his name):

Subject: Aeon Flux

I knew some people might not like it. But this review is ridiculous:

It was so uncomfortable to watch this film, I felt like I was desperately holding back a bout of extreme diarrhea while having dinner with my girlfriend’s folks for the first time. While the feeling kept ebbing and flowing, the pain never quite left. It was just better to grit my teeth and clench down, praying for an end to the night.

-rotten tomatoes

Soo Care for the matinee tomorrow?

And so we went, because, hey, it's got to be better than diarrhea. No, wait, extreme diarrhea.

It was better. It was certainly not great, but it was short of stomach-churningly bad, too.

The good: The special effects. Some of the music. Some of the performances (with a caveat of "they did what they could with what they were given"). The one girl with four hands (though it's not the first time I've heard of it, it's the first time I've seen it convincingly done in a film (see "special effects")).

The bad: Well, the script. The artsy-fartsy shots at times. The lame attempts at humour (there was only one line that made me laugh). The math (two examples: we're told right at the outset that 99% of Earth's population were killed by a virus, and the "remaining 5 million people" formed a city. Um, 1% of 6+billion is more like 60 million than 5 million; and there is a point where we're told that 400 years is equal to 7 generations. I thought a human generation was about 20-25 years, so 7 generations is less than 200 years, tops).

Watching the credits, I was struck by the thought that Pete Postletwhaite and Frances McDormand probably won't be putting this one on their resumés.

I'm such a curmudgeon.