Z/Web

This was a strange little film that I wanted to like, but could not. The plot has a mean-spirited girl and her tired mother move to an island fishing village in the UK somewhere. The girl meets an old woman who tells her an elaborate story about a legend. The inner story is a romance about a sixteen-year-old girl and an ancient curse that makes all the fish go away every 50 years. The girl discovers that the fish only return when given a human sacrifice. Now the mean-spirited girl hearing this story is moved, seeing the girl in the story as much like herself, and eventually we learn her secret (she’s apparently upset because her boyfriend was killed in a motorcycle accident). The girl then is healed by the story, hooray hooray. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen until the end, and the girl is so nasty throughout the film, that I didn’t like her and didn’t care what happened to her, didn’t care about her past, or anything else. Also, the inner story is broken up too much, told in little bits and pieces during the outer story, and it took much too long to tell. Overall, the story was a bit boring (though it had potential), and it was poorly constructed and directed to over-dramatize events as though they were of profound significance. This movie also revealed some surprisingly poor acting from Kirsten Dunst, who’s out of her element as the girl in the inner story. Basically, a lot of potential wasted. Not worth your time.

I’m a huge fan of Isaac Asimov’s robot stories, but the previews of this film had me gagging. It looked like a ridiculous robots-take-over-the-world premise, and it retained none of the fascinating pyschological elements of Asimov’s stories. But I knew I’d see it anyway. To my surprise, it wasn’t that bad. Yes, the robots are dorky-looking, and yes, the plots is robots taking over, but the plot doesn’t completely negate the three laws. (Asimov’s robots are governed by the three laws of robotics, which says that robots can’t harm a human, must obey a human unless it violates the first law, and can protect itself as long as it doesn’t violate the first two laws.) I won’t spoil the plot but the robot rebellion actually makes some Asimovian sense, though this movie’s particular method of detailing the plot is predictable, attrociously stereotypical, and lame. The producers have turned a great psychological thriller into a mindless action flick. As such it’s not terrible, and I wouldn’t rate it at the very bottom of the scale, but it’s unfortunate that such a great concept was wasted on this silly mess. I give it a C. The trailer I give an F.