Reviews

The Childeating Creature with eyes in his palms stands up from the table in readily pursuit of young human flesh. The little girl notices nothing. Including the paralysed, the entire movie-crowd gets up from their seats and simultaneously shout: "LOOK OUT LITTLE GIRL, BEHIND YOU!!!"

This lame viewer-involvement trick which even Disney has not dared to use in their films in the last 30 years wasn't just the single over-fried potato. It was the accurate typifier for the whole of the movie I was watching. A flat, pointless story with cardboard cutouts as characters which would not have been entertaining even if they had skipped the gore and wardrama and had made it soly a fantasy movie for children.

But no matter, there are two movies for the price of one to be seen. The second one being a war-drama! oh goody! Alas, even the reruns of North and South from back in the days are more entertaining wardrama-wise. Then maybe the blend of the two would ultimately make it all worth it? ....What blend?? They abruptly amputated the fantasy story as if it was a rotting limb, even though it was the best thing this movie had going for it...

Thanks to the massive rave reviews and appreciation by a devastating number of people we can look forward to another couple of years of vacuous, bland foreign films which will be labeled masterpieces, in some form of eyecandy-wrapper for handy usage in trailers and posters.

A good day to all.

Children of Men was not a good movie and although the subject matter logically has a mass appeal which has probably lead to the incredible high rating, I'd really wish people would quit voting purely on the entertainment aspect. Needless to say, a movie should score highly on a variety of aspects if it is to be anywhere near the level of a true top-250 film.

I really enjoyed e.g. Spielberg's War of the worlds, again because of the subject matter. But that is not to say that that is a great movie either. Great it truly is not, even though Spielberg did a much better job directing it and the cinematography and the acting can't even be compared to that of Children of Men.

Children of Men has an absurd premise. In stead of depicting a world where human fertility has dropped significantly resulting in chaos, we are to swallow that 'over night' women stopped giving birth period (did the aliens from Worlds finally get it right this time?) and that the only country which can deal with this is Great Britain partially due to the introduction of a nazi-like regime. Why the rest of the world failed to do so is never explained just like everything else which is thought up as the storyline progressed.

The story which is served is equally as absurd as the premise. In a nutshell we are to believe that the birth of a single baby doesn't sound the dawn of a new age but in stead will lead to scientists implementing what 'naturally' happened to this horribly acted Kee on a global scale? This to further the idea that despite the self-destructive nature of humans we are still in control of our fate? Or the proof of the existence of God since it wouldn't be possible for ordinary people to stroll through a warzone with a freshly born child being shot at with endless rounds of amo and survive? Again, this is not explained in the movie, narratives were absent much like any memorable acting, the cameo of Caine aside.

The baby being born into the childless world has no real enemies, only the opposite. Yet it is being hauled through a warzone on a tip by a stoned and aging hippie whose purpose in life is to have his fart-finger pulled, in order to reach a certain group of people who's intentions remain completely vague throughout the entire film? Sigh, how utterly stupid. In 2027 there are only two boats left? One in a warzone and one owned by the 'Human project'? Sounds more like a video game to me, hardly like the story of top-rated movie.

No plot development, no character depth, serious low-budget-feel cinematography and a script without any poignancy. Nothing in this movie that would make it worthy of its high ranking. Totally out of place action-shooter war-scenes and the cheap Hollywood appeal on the senses which initially seemed to be left out, magically appears (alongside the terrorist cell) during the urban shoot-out and henceforth during the so called ending of this movie. The boat being called 'The Tomorrow' came straight out of the Shallowwood textbook and made me bite my teeth till they finally broke off one by one.

The poorly developed chase story which CoM basically is, is just too one-dimensional and frankly just straight out flimsy and it got boring fast. And it is so filled with implausibilities that even the greatest mathematicians of our present world will not be able to count them all.

This movie could have been much much more if its back-story had been fleshed out to some degree and its storyline aspiring to be more than just covering a bunch of people constantly traveling from one dreary set to the next. Preferably with one or two strong and discerning messages (and not a score of them which are never explored and certainly had nothing to do with the actual storyline, making it the pretentious twaddle it truly became) and performed by actors worthy of playing next to Caine.

An unarguably over-hyped piece of pretentious rubbish. Simply a vehicle for art-director Lubezki to play around with his camera and editing-room and for Cuaron to bludgeon the audience with disjointed references to contemporary issues with no tale to tell. A typical product of the headline-society we've become with on par appreciation.

The reason I went ahead to see this flick was because of the near 6 vote it had and much of the commentary which was rather positive. It is usually a good way of checking out a movie beforehand but in this case I felt cheated.

Because even with the best intentions, its impossible to find this movie anything other than it being a complete disaster in every aspect.

Story: The story is no more, no less just as the tagline on the cover. Nothing else happens but a guy being killed, brought back to life, killed, brought back to life etc. There is no sub direction, no subplot or any other elaborate magnification on the whys or the hows. Some have tried in their comments to led u to believe that it has, but there are none. The conversations go like this:

Guy1: "How about that weather ey?" Guy2: "What about it?" Guy1: "Bit moist don't u think?" Guy2: "now that u mention it.." Guy1: "I hate walking in the rain, don't u?" Guy2: "yeah I did that once, I got all wet!" Etc.

Plot: There is no plot, the stuff is just happening without any redeeming explanation as to why or what. They just mention some words as Nanotechnology (which isn't used) and cryogenics (not used either) and this is supposed to interest the viewer to go ahead and see it through. They could just as well have mentioned Kamasutra techniques which would have had no baring on the plot either.

<---here is that spoiler but since u should really skip this film u might as well just read it--->

Plot twist/ending: They tried to have one, but hopelessly failed and again I can not believe someone actually wrote that it had an unexpected twist at the end. Anyone who has ever seen a horror flick before in his life must have secretly been praying at the beginning of the movie that the corpse in the snow was not going to be alive again at the end. But OMG!!! that's exactly what happens. My wife and I couldn't stop laughing when it did. And the living corpse turned out to be the real doctor. "So what?" I ask u. It's not like the real doctor would have done anything different opposed to the guy impersonating him (the assistant, subject nr. 1). that's not a twist, it's lamer than lame and just about the worst thing they could have come up with.

Performance: The performance of the actors was overall good. Some did claim that dr. Vic bore a too striking resemblance to Jack Nicholson, to me a young Michael Ironside came to mind.

Special effects: Someone wrote about special effects, like if they were even in this movie. Or maybe this person was talking about those pathetic looking contact lenses the main character had on his eyes which made it hard to keep a straight face watching the guy from that point on.

Location: The location of the set is praised by many in the comments, but lets be honest people; a horror/thriller set in an overly sunny and bright snowy environment could not ever work. It made it look like a holiday brochure for crying out loud.

Overall only the acting could have been a lot worse but please, regarding the rest, who in their right minds would seriously find this an enjoyable pastime?

I rate this stinker 2/10. The extra point given for those beautiful blue eyes of Kate (Courtney Mace).