Reviews

I nearly, so very nearly, died of boredom while watching this poor mans "Event Horizon".

I'm actually finding it quite hard to articulate just how mind numbingly boring this film was. I would use the term "a month of Sundays", but I feel that just doesn't do it justice, because even if you were to squeeze it all up so it became an infinity of Sundays, there would still be enough boredom there to squash in another myriad of Sabbaths!

In this, if a scene could have the ass dragged out of it, it most definitely executed that dragging tediously and laboriously to the fore.

"Jesus wept!" I would cry, get on with it people! Move it along! We've got it, no need for another ten minutes of Mr Pitt looking broodily into the ether.

This is supposedly set in "the near future", where humans have advanced so much, that technology is at the point of bases on the moon and Mars and they have started exploring the outer solar system. So given this advancement, I find it preposterously unbelievable, that to reach his rocket that will take him from Mars to Neptune, Mr Pitt has to swim through an underground Martian sea/lake using a system of ropes, ie: pull himself through the water using rope!? They can build a ship that takes them to Neptune, but can't build a waterproof perspex tunnel?!

While we're on the subject of preposterous and improbable story lines, it purportedly took his father sixteen years to reach the outer solar system, but it seemingly just takes Mr Pitt about sixteen weeks to emulate his fathers journey?!!

Now, I realise that there's a distinct possibility that the events (in the context of this film), never really happened and it's all just Mr Pitts way of dealing with his fathers dissappearance and a manifestation of his abandonment issues, but if that is the case, I thought film and TV had moved on since the reappearance of Bobby Ewing in the shower in "Dallas" and all that had happened since Bobby's death had been "just been a bad dream"! Jeezo! Gies peace and come back Victoria Principal, all is forgiven!

I certainly wish myself watching this movie had just been a bad dream, awful!

Everything about Peter Mullen's 1998 tragicomedy is brilliant. Absolutely superb performances all round, but especially from Gary Lewis ("She ain't heavy, she's my mother!") and Douglas Henshall The scene where Lewis is carrying his mother's coffin on his own while gradually sinking lower and lower is a fantastic metaphor and still has me rolling on the floor laughing with every watch! The scenes with Alex Norton as the maddest, angriest barman in Scotland, ever also deserves a wee mention as it's gallus Scottish humour at it's very, very best. Must see cinema, time and time again! "Ye, mad wolf!"