Peter Morel's From Paris with Love is enjoyable junk food cinema. The plot is inconsequential, the dialogue is pretty much forgettable, and there's not a single thing to think about while you're watching it. But it's so much fun to watch, I doubt many will care. The movie is a violent live action cartoon, and thank goodness for that. If this movie tried to take itself seriously, it would have been laughed right off the screen.

The cast certainly seems to be enjoying themselves, which is always a plus in a movie like this. If they're not having fun, then the audience usually isn't. It's especially fun to watch John Travolta reveling his role as Charlie Wax, a super spy who has a passion for guns, prostitutes, fast cars, and big explosions. His methods are unorthodox, but he gets the job done. And you have to admire his talent for being able to hang himself outside the window of a car that's speeding down a highway while aiming a bazooka at a fleeing vehicle, without anyone else on the highway apparently noticing him. That's not easy to do. If you don't believe me, try it yourself. Travolta plays him as if he knows he has the coolest job in the world, and he's well aware he's the biggest bad ass in the room. He demonstrates this with gusto when he is able to clear an entire Chinese restaurant full of assassins in a matter of seconds. Sure, the stunt work relies heavily on Matrix-style special effects, but the action sequences are edited smoothly enough so that we can not only tell what's going on at all times, but we also get to see enough of the actors getting to do their own stuff.

The plot is an afterthought, but here's the rundown anyway. Charlie is teamed up on his latest mission with James Reece (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), the assistant to the American ambassador in Paris. James is a laid back man, happy with his fiance, Caroline (Kasia Smutniak), and doesn't know what to make of Charlie's extreme ways when he's paired up with the spy to be his driver. Charlie's mission seems to be to snuff out some Asian drug dealers that have ties to the recent death of the Secretary of Defense's daughter, but it turns out the mission is even more urgent. There is a meeting of American political figures taking place in Paris, and some terrorists are plotting to bomb the gathering. There are a few plot twists to keep things moving, but really, the plot is not the focus here. It's the string of elaborate and well-staged action sequences that grab our attention, as well as the likable "odd couple" dynamic that Travolta and Rhys-Meyers bring. It's funny to see how they handle each situation differently. Charlie is calm and collected as the number of bodies pile up in his wake, while James seems to often be wondering how he ended up running around Paris, carrying a vase full of cocaine.

The story was dreamed up by Luc Besson, and if you've seen any of his films, you'll see the connection. He specializes in action films that are usually bigger than life and twice as dumb. This is no exception. It zooms along, barely making enough sense for us to follow, and keeps on tossing in a lot of big action set pieces to distract us from the fact that there's not much behind the explosions. Here, we at least get a few interesting relationships. Besides the main one between Charlie and James, we also get a romantic one between James and Caroline. It doesn't get a lot of screen time, but it's important none the less, and holds our interest. Rhys-Meyers and Smutniak have obvious chemistry together, and offer a nice counter balance to the comic book-style action sequences.

I feel I should stress that From Paris with Love should not be taken seriously in the slightest. I say this, because some critics are accusing the movie of being needlessly cruel, or even racist and sexist in its depiction of minorities and women. Maybe if the film was grounded in any form of reality, I would agree, but I think most open minded viewers will see the movie for what it is - A bloody live action cartoon for adults that delivers on what it promises, and is the first truly fun movie to hit the screens this year.

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Based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks, Dear John is a tepid and uninvolved wannabe romantic tear-jerker. The lovers at the center of the story are John Tyree (Channing Tatum) and Savannah (Amanda Seyfried). They meet on a beach back in the Spring of 2001, and the movie is supposed to follow their relationship over the years, along with the many trials they meet along the way. The main miscalculation of the filmmakers is that neither one is very interesting, nor do they get to spend much time together, so why should we care?

The two lovers come from different walks of life. John is a Green Beret on leave with a murky troubled past. The movie keeps on hinting at it, but never goes into any detail. At one point, he takes Savannah out to dinner, and as they enter the restaurant, they are stopped by a man who asks John what he's doing there, and that he doesn't want any trouble. We never find out who this man is, what happened between John and him, nor do we ever see him again for the rest of the movie. As for Savannah, she's a blandly sweet little thing who likes to ride horses, build homes for charity, and hang out with the mentally challenged little boy who lives next door to her. Her dream is to open a summer camp for autistic children. Despite their different life styles, they hit it off, and spend two weeks together in lover's bliss. He teaches her how to surf, she sings romantic songs to him on a guitar, and they both make PG-13-rated love. Soon, they must go their separate ways, as he has to go back to the military, and she has to go back to college. He promises her that she'll see him again when his tour of duty ends in 12 months, and that their time apart will pass quickly. "A lot can happen in 12 months", Savannah replies ominously.

Naturally, something does happen in those months apart. September 11th happens, and John is forced to extend his tour of military service. They begin to write letters to each other, but it is hard to keep in touch, and both begin to lose hope. The audience loses hope right around the same time, as the screenplay by Jamie Linden (We Are Marshall) begins to hopelessly spin its wheels. It can't think of anything to do with these characters, as they're forced to spend the entire movie apart, and there was never much chemistry between them when they were together. John is kind of rigid and wooden (part of this I credit to Mr. Tatum's rather wooden performance here), while Savannah seems nice enough, but never develops a real personality. They fail to create any sparks, and since certain plot developments (which I will not reveal) force Savannah to leave the film for the entire middle section, we're left with absolutely no desire to see them get together, or concern ourselves as to whether they will see each other again. It's strange and a little uncomfortable to watch a movie that is obviously trying to tug at our hearts, but creates no emotional response whatsoever, due to the haphazard nature of the characters.

Oddly enough, the film's secondary relationship comes across as being more memorable. This is the relationship between John and his emotionally distant and mildly autistic father, played by Richard Jenkins. It stands out not so much because the characters are more strongly thought out here, but because of Jenkins' performance, which is the best in the film. He plays a man who seems to be afraid to show any real emotion to his son, or to anyone. His main passion is collecting coins, which he spends hours every day obsessively checking and cleaning each one. He also cooks the same food for dinner every night of the week, each week. The subplot concerning John's efforts to reach his father emotionally, and to ease him slowly out of his rigid routine is the closest thing the movie has to a real emotional impact. Too bad that the conclusion to this plot ends up feeling overly calculated and manipulative, as well as anti-climactic.

Dear John is an unsatisfying movie that seems to think its hitting all the right emotional notes, even when it isn't. We don't care as much as the movie seems to think we do, because the characters are sketchy at best, sometimes fading in and out of the narrative at random. Early on in the film, we're introduced to one of Savannah's friends, who obviously is in love with her, and becomes jealous when her attention is turned to John almost the second they meet on the beach. After a brief fight with John, the character disappears from the plot, and soon from the movie altogether. I was also put off by the way the filmmakers seem to almost romanticize the current war situation, since John only sees any time on the battlefield when it is convenient for the plot. A majority of his time as a soldier is spent sitting around in a tent, waiting for letters from his lover. After the intense realism of The Hurt Locker, this movie's vision of war seems downright tame.
Looking at the film's message board over on the IMDB, it seems that fans are upset that the ending has been changed from the book. They complain that the new ending is artificial, which I find odd, since everything that comes before it is pretty artificial also. I suspect Dear John will do well with the crowd who flocks to the Twilight movies. There's a lot of attractive actors on display, looking longingly at each other, as they recite cornball romance novel dialogue. I didn't like this movie very much, but hey, I don't like Twilight that much either.

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It's no secret that Edge of Darkness is an important movie for Mel Gibson, and serves as an opportunity for him and the major Hollywood studios to see if there's still an interest in the star after having not had a leading role since 2002's Signs, and several personal and legal tabloid incidents. My reaction after seeing the film? He's still an intriguing screen presence. He's older and a lot more leather-skinned than you might remember him, and the character he plays here isn't his deepest or most memorable. But, he makes it his own, nonetheless.

The movie throws him into a complex, and somewhat silly conspiracy theory thriller, where he plays a grizzled but kindhearted homicide detective named Thomas Craven. Thomas is tough as nails, but generally a good guy. He doesn't seem to have any vices (he prefers a ginger ale over any alcoholic beverage), and his 24-year-old daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) is the light of his life. When Emma pays a surprise visit, Thomas notices that something is wrong. She seems violently ill, and suffers from brief bursts of nausea. Thomas tries to take her to the hospital, but as soon as they step out the front door, a masked gunman cries out and shoots Emma dead before fleeing. The authorities and the press assume that the bullet that killed his daughter was intended for him, but he's not so sure when he searches through Emma's belongings and finds a loaded gun. Digging further, Thomas discovers that there are a lot of people connected to his daughter fearing for their lives, including Emma's boyfriend (Shawn Roberts) and a former co-worker (Caterina Scorsone). The signs all seem to point that Emma was trying to be a whistle blower at the corporation where she worked, Northmoor Research Facility, which handles nuclear materials for the U.S. government.

Edge of Darkness doesn't rewrite the rules of the thriller genre, but it plays by the rules well enough to entertain. The film itself is based on a five part British TV mini series, and although I can't compare it to the source material, the film does not feel too rushed or tossed together. The screenplay by William Monahan (The Departed) and Andrew Bovell has to pull a difficult balancing act of juggling a convoluted and sometimes confusing plot, with a lot of characters. First and foremost, there's the shady boss at the corporation where Emma used to work, who is obviously hiding something. He's played by Danny Huston, who portrays the character as a smarmy villain who thinks he's above it all. He sometimes comes across as almost a James Bond villain, hiding in his sleek fortress-like corporation, poisoning and gassing his victims, and dumping bodies in the water, using his connections to cover them up as "accidents". Meanwhile, there's a shady government operative (Ray Winstone), and equally shady government figures and Senators who all have plenty of secrets to hide. It's not very hard to point out the bad guys in this movie, as they usually drive around in big, black, suspicious-looking vehicles that practically scream "property of evil henchmen".

It's all ridiculous, of course, and we usually are one step ahead of the characters. Not even the seemingly innocent character who ends up double crossing Gibson's character and selling him out to the bad guys is much of a surprise. Despite it all, I found it enjoyable in an escapist, popcorn entertainment sort of way. You pay to see Mel Gibson pissed off and seeking revenge against slimy corporate and political people, and you get it here. You also get it done rather well. The entire cast is strong, and director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) keeps the pace lively enough so that we're engaged in the search for the truth. The movie makes some missteps, such as some scenes early on when Gibson's character has "conversations" with his dead daughter, and the film's final scene is kind of goofy in the way it tries to put a feel good spin on a relatively downer ending. Fortunately, it does not step into the area of wrong-headedness too often, and managed to hold my interest.

The movie all rests on Gibson, however. His character of Thomas Craven sometimes seems kind of one note in his quest for revenge, but he manages to sneak in a little sly, vicious fun here and there, such as a scene where he tells a person he's interrogating to take off his glasses, and when the man complies, Gibson punches him in the face. We don't exactly get a chance to feel for the character. Aside from a scene where he scatters his daughter's ashes on a beach they used to visit when she was a child, we don't really get to see him truly mourn for her. Still, he fits the role of the angry vengeance-driven hero pushed to the edge well. We can sense his fuse getting shorter in each passing scene, and he does get to show that intensity that made him famous. He gives just the right amount of rage to get the audience behind his quest for revenge. Now if he could have actually brought some genuine characteristics or emotion, this could have been a good movie, instead of a fun escapist thriller.
I'm recommending the film for what it is. It shows that Gibson still has what it takes, and it's made well enough. Edge of Darkness is not a great movie, but it works on all the right basic levels. It's a vendetta movie, it's an entertaining one, it's ridiculous but not so much that it winds up hurting the film, and that's really all that needs to be said.

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Much like this month's other romantic comedy release, Leap Year, When In Rome is a perfectly standard example of the genre that gets a little extra mileage out of its lead stars. In this case, it's Kristen Bell (of TV's Veronica Mars) and Josh Duhamel (from the Transformers films). They both bring a certain down to earth charm, which is much needed in this film, as it's humor is often so broad that it resembles a live action cartoon, and not in a good way. With all the goofiness surrounding these two likable performances, I sometimes found myself wishing they were falling in love in a different movie.

The plot is strictly by the numbers, which is to be expected. Kristen Bell plays Beth, a museum curator who is married to her work, and doesn't have time for a relationship ever since her heart was broken in her last one. Early on in the film, she's approached by her little sister (Alexis Dziena), who is getting married in Rome after a brief whirlwind love affair. Beth is forced to drop everything and fly off to Italy to attend the wedding, where she meets a man named Nick (Josh Duhamel), who despite being highly accident prone and a magnet for pratfalls, could be the guy she's looking for. Just when Beth is about to make her move to get closer to him, she sees Nick seemingly being intimate with another woman. We obviously know it's not what it looks like, and the whole situation could be resolved if one of the characters just said a few words. But, Beth takes it the wrong way, gets drunk, and goes wading in the water in Rome's famous "Fountain of Love". There's a superstition that if you remove a coin that was thrown into the fountain, the person who tossed that coin will fall in love with you. Beth, in her drunken haze, removes four coins (and a poker chip), and when she returns home to New York, she suddenly finds herself stalked by four total strangers who seem infatuated with her, and won't leave until they profess their love to her.

The fact that these four people who tossed the coins into the fountain in Italy all just happen to live in New York and within walking distance to Beth is hard to swallow, but I digress. The men who start chasing after and following Beth everywhere she goes includes an insane artist with a foot fetish (Will Arnett), a vain and egotistical male model (Dax Shepard), a street magician who is obviously supposed to be a parody of stunt illusionist Criss Angel (Jon Heder), and a middle aged sausage tycoon (Danny DeVito). These characters can sometimes be funny (especially Heder), but they often come across as creepy, as a lot of the things they do to get closer to Beth would probably lead to them being arrested in real life, or at least a restraining order or two. And what of the poker chip she picked up from the fountain? Beth assumes that it belongs to Nick, since he starts calling as soon as she returns home, and seems genuinely interested in her. He explains the situation with the other woman that night, but she still thinks he's only after her because of the magic from the fountain. But then she starts to warm up to him the more time they spend together.

Are they destined to be together? Is it the magic of the fountain that is making Nick fall in love, or is it real? And if it is the magic, is it right for Beth to take advantage of it? These are the kind of questions you can only get away with asking in a movie like When in Rome. It's featherweight, it's silly, and it's not exactly that memorable. But it has to be said that the performances of Bell and Duhamel go a long way. The characters are thinly written, but their on screen chemistry and individual performances actually make us want to see them get together. I was grateful for this, as the film itself has very little to offer. While I chuckled at some of the more offbeat moments of humor (including an early scene concerning a very stubborn vase that refuses to shatter), the jokes can sometimes gets a little too broad, especially concerning the four obsessed suitors who start following Beth around everywhere. That, or the scenes have disappointing payoffs, such as a sequence where Nick takes Beth to dinner at a bizarre restaurant where it's pitch black, and the servers wear night vision goggles. There's a lot that could have been done with this scene, but the script goes for the predictable gags.

Outside of the charm of the two leads, there's not a lot that stands out. Director Mark Steven Johnson (Ghost Rider) and writers David Diamond and David Weissman (Old Dogs) go the predictable route, right down to the casting. Beth has some supportive best friends, who look and act like the best friends from other romantic comedies. The icy boss at Beth's job is played by Anjelica Huston, who specializes in these kind of roles whenever she's cashing a paycheck in a movie. Even the Rome settings have been swiped from other romantic movies, and seem to be staged the same way. Even if we feel like we've seen it all before, at least the movie is never boring. And the whole thing has a breezy tone that keeps the experience of watching it as painless as possible, no matter how generic it sometimes gets.
Can you tell that I'm fishing for complements here? That's because like almost every other January release this year, When in Rome is harmless and inoffensive, but not memorable in the slightest. It will work as a date movie, but that's about it. For many, I'm guessing, that will be enough.

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"I don't believe in God.
That's okay. He doesn't believe in you, either".
-Dialogue exchange from Legion.

Legion starts out so spectacularly silly, it's almost a shame that it loses faith in itself and becomes conventional. An apocalypse movie that starts out with possessed old ladies crawling the walls and screaming obscenities, as well as possessed ice cream truck drivers, should not end with martial arts fights, car chases, and explosions. But it does, sadly. Co-writer and director Scott Stewart (a special effects artist making his feature film debut) gives his film a sense of self-awareness early on, and loses it.

Things kick off when an angel named Michael (Paul Bettany) drops from Heaven, cuts off his wings, grabs some weapons, and swipes a police car to drive to a small roadside diner and service station in the middle of the desert. It's here that a young woman named Charlie (Adrianne Palicki) works and lives in a trailer behind the diner. She's eight months pregnant, and doesn't know that the child she carries will be mankind's last hope. It seems that God has lost faith in humanity, and is sending an army of angels led by Gabriel (Kevin Durand) down to Earth to wipe out all life. Her future child is the only hope we have for survival, though it's never really explained why, or what he is destined to accomplish. The angel Michael thinks that humanity still has hope, so he has disobeyed orders, and is fighting to protect Charlie and the few innocent bystanders that become trapped in the diner when the opposing angels begin surrounding the place.

The angels possess humans, and attempt to pass themselves off as being normal. In one memorable scene, an angel possesses a little old lady with a walker, and tries to act casual. She doesn't get very far, though, and arouses the suspicions of everyone else in the diner when she starts screaming that everyone there will die and burn. The angel gives up the charade, turns into a screaming monstrosity, and starts climbing the walls and ceilings. The owner of the diner (Dennis Quaid) doesn't know what to make of any of this, until Michael shows up, and explains the whole situation. Even then, Quaid's character is not convinced when Michael starts talking about angels. You'd think seeing a little old lady grow fangs, rip the lungs out of an unfortunate bystander with her teeth, and climb the ceiling, blood dripping from her jowls, would be enough to convince the guy that hey, maybe something's not right here.

Charlie's reaction to the news that she will give birth to humanity's savior is priceless. When Michael informs her of her destiny, she replies with, "I'm just a waitress. I don't even own a car"! I was having a lot of fun with Legion right around this point. It was the kind of gloriously stupid B-movie that I can enjoy. I silently hoped that it could keep this momentum, and not fall flat. It was right around this point that the movie did indeed fall flat. While never unwatchable, the movie just seems to stop trying, and goes for the conventional approach. We get a lot of shoot outs as the survivors barricade themselves within the diner, and we get a couple car chases that are done well enough, but never raise the excitement level like they should. We also never get a moment quite like the angel possessing the old lady. We get one that seems promising, when a possessed ice cream man threatens the survivors, but nothing is done with him.

Speaking of the survivors, they're your usual stock group. There's Jeep (Lucas Black), who's the son of the diner's owner and an all around nice guy, so he falls into the hero role. There's also a dysfunctional family with a troubled teen daughter (Willa Howard) that's run into car trouble, a religious cook (Charles S. Dutton) who begins to question his faith, and a shady guy (Tyrese Gibson) passing through. Most of these characters spend a lot of time looking out windows, or picking off any angels that get close to the diner, so we never get to know them that well. Of the characters, Jeep obviously plays the biggest role, as he protects Charlie. The ending also hints that he will play some kind of part in the war for humanity to come, but it's not very clear on the details.
I started out watching this movie with a big goofy grin on my face. This could have been so much more if the filmmakers had just had the courage to embrace the silliness of it all. Instead, Legion cops out by taking itself seriously during the second half. If ever there was a movie to not take itself seriously, a movie where the apocalypse is battled out in a roadside diner is that movie.

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Compared to recent kids comedies like The Spy Next Door and the latest Alvin and the Chipmunks film, The Tooth Fairy is certainly better than I expected. The big difference between this film and the other two is that it does not seem to completely be running on autopilot. There's some imagination on display, a bright cast who seem to be having a lot of fun with the material, and even a few genuine laughs. I can't quite recommend it to anyone over the age of 12, but I must be honest when I say I enjoyed this film more than I thought I would.

The film stars Dwayne Johnson, whose charisma and screen presence seems well suited for a kids movie. He plays Derek, a former professional hockey player who was sent back to the minors after an injury. The injury has long healed, but he's stayed put, giving up on his dreams. This has made him somewhat bitter and cynical at the world. Despite this, Derek has found fame in the minors as being "The Tooth Fairy", as his fans have dubbed him. He's called this, because he specializes in powerful body blows that, yes, knock the teeth out of his opponents. He's good at playing for the crowd, and even has his own personal recliner chair in the penalty box. Off the ice, Derek is dating a single mom named Carly (Ashley Judd) with two kids. One fateful night while taking care of the kids, he tells Carly's six-year-old daughter Tess (Destiny Whitlock) that the Tooth Fairy she's anxiously waiting for to leave money under her pillow does not exist.

This angers Carly, and someone else unexpected as well. We learn that the Head Fairy (Julie Andrews) up in Fairy Land, who is in charge of all the Tooth Fairies in the world, has had enough of Derek shattering the hopes and dreams of children with his cynicism. She summons him up to Fairy Land, where he is sentenced to be an actual Tooth Fairy himself until he can learn to be a better person. This is where the movie starts to have a little fun with itself. Derek is assigned a case worker named Tracy (Stephen Merchant), who dreams of being a tooth fairy himself, but since he doesn't have wings, he has to settle for supervising Derek in his new job. There's a lot that goes into being a Tooth Fairy, it turns out. They have special equipment that can be used to avoid detection (amnesia dust, invisible spray, devices that can scare away pesky cats or dogs), which are provided by a fellow fairy named Jerry (Billy Crystal). Merchant and Crystal are both naturally skilled comedians, and they get to slip in some funny bits of dialogue, most of which I imagine were improvised on the set.

The film somewhat resembles the tone and structure of The Santa Clause films with Tim Allen, so I was not surprised to learn that director Michael Lembeck worked on both sequels for that movie. Still, I admit I had a little bit more fun with The Tooth Fairy. One thing that helps is that star Dwayne Johnson seems willing to go to just about any lengths to get a laugh. Don a pink tutu, put on a pair of frilly fairy wings, run around pretending that he's six inches tall while trying to avoid a hungry cat, or play tricks on his fellow hockey players with the help of his invisible spray. Kids will likely find this stuff hilarious, and adults in the audience will smile. The cast that has been gathered is also a little bit brighter than the norm. It's always welcome to see Julie Andrews in a movie, even if she is a little under used here. Stephen Merchant gets off plenty of one liners that fly over kids' heads, but adults will laugh at. And Billy Crystal's introduction scene gets some of the biggest genuine laughs in the film. The movie's obviously trying to appeal to both sides of its own audience, without coming across as being inappropriate for the younger viewers.

Too bad the conventional plot has to keep on getting in the way. While it never becomes unbearable or sappy, the scenes concerning Derek softening and warming up to Carly's two kids seem rather uninspired compared to the scenes that do work. Some parts of the movie seem to be clever and sly, while others seem to be written on total autopilot. The fact that there are five writers credited to the screenplay (the script's apparently been floating around Hollywood for almost 20 years, and was originally set to star Arnold Schwarzenegger) explains this. There's just such a huge difference in the quality of the writing from scene to scene. Whenever Johnson and Merchant are trading barbs and insults with each other, the dialogue is lively and fun. The dialogue whenever Johnson is talking to the kids or to his on-screen girlfriend seem to have been written by committee. It doesn't quite drag the film down, but it's disappointing none the less.
Anyone looking for something pleasant and inoffensive to take the kids to will find it with The Tooth Fairy. Heck, the parents might smile more than they thought they would. As long as that's all you want, you'll find what you need. The movie is gentle, funny in parts, and would probably get a rave review from me if I were 20 years younger.

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Like a lot of inspirational movies "inspired by true stories", Extraordinary Measures plays loose with the facts of the story it's based on. We meet John (Brendan Fraser) and Aileen Crowley (Keri Russell), a married couple with three children facing a crisis. Two of their kids, eight-year-old Meagan (Meredith Droeger) and six-year-old Patrick (Diego Velazquez) have a rare and deadly illness called Pompe disease. John works as an executive at a big business company, but spends most of his time tirelessly searching for information on the Internet for information on the disease, and for a possible cure, of which there is none. The average life expectancy of a child with Pompe is nine years, so he is running out of time.

During his search for information, John comes across an article about a medical scientist who is working on a cure, but can't find funding for his research. In real life, that scientist was Dr. Yuan-Tsong Chen, but since there are no Asian male actors working in Hollywood capable of having above the title status in a medical drama, Dr. Chen has become Dr. Robert Stonehill. He's played by Harrison Ford, a marketable name. Dr. Stonehill is a bit of a wild card. He's reckless, he has a short temper, he doesn't listen to authority, and he likes to blast rock music while he works at odd hours, which annoys his fellow scientists. But, John sees something in his theories, and thinks he could find a cure with the proper funding. John gathers up the money Stonehill needs, and the two go into business together.

Despite the family crisis angle, and the race against time to find a cure, Extraordinary Measures is somewhat laid back. Like a lot of movies I've reviewed recently, there's a lack of emotion that prevents the audience from getting involved. Even though little Meagan and Patrick are fighting for their lives, the movie does not emphasize this. Meagan has a medical scare early on that sends her to the hospital, but after that, she's a pretty happy and plucky little girl. She spouts off one-liners like a pro, and acts more like a standard Hollywood movie child, than a girl facing her own mortality. Poor Patrick is barely touched upon in the film. His big scene revolves around the fact that the disease has made his body so weak, he can no longer throw bits of bread to feed the ducks with the rest of his family. The kids are not so much characters in the story, but manipulations of the plot.

That leaves us the adults. They're certainly all played by fine actors. Ford is obviously an old pro, and Fraser and Russell are both underrated as actors when it comes to drama. But here, they all seem to simply be filling the roles, or giving just enough that the material requires. We never get a sense of the relationship between Fraser and Russell, as all of their scenes are based around worrying about their kids. The fact that Russell is pushed into the background once Ford's character enters the plot doesn't help matters. Speaking of Ford, his portrayal of Dr. Stonehill can best be described as predictable. He's a gruff, cold-hearted cynic whose heart slowly melts the more time he spends with the Crowleys and their adorable dying children. He plays the role well enough, but there's nothing that comes through in his performance. We learn so little about Stonehill, I wouldn't be surprised if the entire performance was based solely on a brief character description given to Ford by screenwriter Robert Nelson Jacobs (The Water Horse).

The movie itself is just as sketchy as the main characters, and that's just the problem. The whole thing feels like it's been clean and sanitized, and often feels like a not very memorable made-for-TV movie being projected on the screen. Perhaps this is the influence of the film's distributor, CBS Studios. Whatever the case, the movie feels toothless instead of engaging. We can't get behind the thinly developed characters, and the story is so paint-by-numbers, it never gets off the ground. As Extraordinary Measures played out, and obstacles kept on flying in the way of John and Dr. Stonehill, it felt like director Tom Vaughan (What Happens in Vegas) was stretching things out, rather than staying true to the facts. I grew restless when I began to realize that the movie had no intention of really explaining how the cure came to be (very little time is actually spent within the lab), but would focus on mawkish melodrama.
I'm sure the real story could make a compelling movie, but this is not it. This is one of those movies that you never feel reaching you emotionally, despite its best efforts. If good intentions were all it took, this film would be a winner. Unfortunately, it takes so much more. It takes a lot of stuff that Extraordinary Measures just doesn't have.

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In bringing Alice Sebold's acclaimed novel to the screen, filmmaker Peter Jackson seems to have gotten the basic plot of The Lovely Bones, but nothing else that made it stand out on the page. The movie is scattered, confused, and surprisingly weak. There are wild swings in tones, characters that aren't even developed to half the level they were in the novel, and an overall sense that Jackson understands the plot, but doesn't have a clue where the heart of the story lies. This is supposed to be a story about love and loss, but the film is mechanical when it should be engaging.

Just like in the original story, we are introduced to 14-year-old Susie Salmon (Saorise Ronan), who narrates the film, and tells us up front that she is dead, and that she met her end on December 6, 1973, at the hand of a man from her own neighborhood. We see glimpses of Susie's life - The love for model sailboats that she shared with her father, Jack (Mark Wahlberg), how she dreamed of being a photographer, and the building feelings she felt for a fellow and older classmate (Reece Ritchie). All of this came to an abrupt end while crossing a cornfield on her way home from school. She had a run-in with the man across the street from her home, George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), who lures her into an underground room, and murders her. Susie is sent to an afterlife, where she watches her family get torn apart by her disappearance. Jack becomes obsessed with finding information on Susie's killer, her mother Abigail (Rachel Weisz) has to leave when she can no longer stand the pain, and Susie's younger sister Lindsey (Rose McIver) becomes suspicious of Mr. Harvey, when he begins stalking her as well.

All of this is emotionally gripping on the written page, but the screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Jackson misses the point, or sometimes takes some extreme short cuts in order to fit it all into a two hour narrative. The actions of the characters sometimes make little sense in the script. and the movie never focuses on them enough to the point that we become emotionally attached to them. One of the key victims of this treatment is Susie herself. As soon as she is murdered, she becomes rather boring. We see her wander around in the afterlife, which is pulled off beautifully on a technical level with special effects creating a dream-like landscape, but never grabs us on any emotional level. It quickly turns into Susie walking around a technical demo, and grinds the narrative to almost a total halt whenever the story switches over to her.

The Lovely Bones is a complex story. Perhaps too complex to put on the screen. Characters have become overly simplified, and the narrative has lost much of its power. Part of this has to do with the way Jackson has softened the blow of Susie's murder. It occurs off screen, and no mention of the sexual assault is made. This was obviously done to secure a PG-13 rating, but this is obviously a story for mature audiences, so why was the effort made to tone it down? Other sacrifices include the character of George Harvey losing much of his personality in the transition. While the performance by Stanley Tucci is chilling, the character is disappointingly thin. He's nothing more than a standard creepy, shifty-eyed killer type, and somewhat boring. Then again, the narrative jumps around so much here, it never gives any of the characters a chance to stand out. Jack's obsession to find the truth about his daughter doesn't have half the emotional impact as on the page, and often seems convoluted how he stumbles upon the right information.

So, the obvious question becomes, would I like the film better if I had no knowledge of the source material? I think I would have been even more confused, frankly. The choppy narrative, under-written characters, and sometimes confused editing prevent us from getting a real handle on what's going on. I think this is a case of the filmmakers feeling so close to the source material that they forget to clue us in. Or maybe years of handling epics like The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and King Kong have lessened Jackson's ability to relate to human drama and characters. I can't say for sure. He seems to be trying for a similar vibe here that he created in 1994's Heavenly Creatures, which successfully blended spectacle with drama and tragedy. He's lost the heart with this film. We don't feel the sense of loss with the family, we don't feel the horror with the murder, and we don't feel the wonder with the scenes in the afterlife. All of this makes The Lovely Bones a curiosity, rather than the engaging experience it wants to be.
I don't want to put across the sense that this is a bad, or even an unwatchable movie. It's disappointing, even largely so if you're a fan of the novel. Maybe the fans were right when they said the story was unfilmable. Maybe Jackson wasn't the right person to tell this story. All I know is that the film adaptation of The Lovely Bones knows the music, but it doesn't know the words.

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