Stay Away from "The Happening

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Stay away from "The Happening" My normal rule of thumb is: see any and all movies starring Mark Wahlberg. Why? Well, Forrest Gump could have summed it up by saying "Life is like a Mark Wahlberg movie...you never know what you're gonna get." On one hand there's The Departed Mark Wahlberg then on the other hand there's the Planet of the Apes Mark Wahlberg. Unfortunately, The Happening falls more into the Fear category than it does the Boogie Nights category. But, is Sir Marky Mark entirely to blame? The answer is quite simply...yes. However, out of fear that Mr. Wahlberg may some how run across this blog and kick my ass, I'm placing the blame squarely on M. Night Shyamalan's shoulders. M. Night has constructed a bigger disaster than God just did in Iowa. What, too soon? Anyway, M. Night has always been a very smarmy director and with good reason...he is a great talent. However, he doesn't take criticism well. He knows he has made a piece of shit and he is trying to cover up the stench with the fragrance of years past. The tagline for this movie is: "We've Sensed it. We've seen The Signs. Now...It's Happening." He needs to stop reminding us that he made a few good movies. We get it. Woody Allen puts out a piece of shit every year , but you don't see him reminding us that he made Annie Hall. The only difference between these two directors is that M. Night has much bigger budgets with lousier actors so the risk that the studios take on his projects is greater. He needs to take a note from the Woody Allen playbook and stop putting himself in his movies. However, he was one of the better actors in this film. Where to begin with the review of this film? Let's start with the unintentional laughter that the audience had. That's right...unintentional. The acting and dialogue was that hideous. It should have been billed as a comedy instead of M. Night's first rated R feature. Let's just say that the Master Pancake boys need to get a hold of this film as quickly as possible. It should be mocked pronto. Let's move onto the unintelligible storyline. Mark Wahlberg is your average Joe teacher who one minute is talking to his class about the disappearance of the honey bees and the next minute is saving the world (east coast) from whatever. Oh, the relationship with his wife also sucks so they get to work that out in 90 minutes as well. Things happen, people kill themselves...Is it nature? Is it chemical? Does anyone care? I certainly don't. I would review this movie further, but I actually walked out after an hour. Yeah, I walked out of The Happening, but I sat through Jumper...are you starting to understand how bad this movie is now? The Alamo Drafthouse had last call an half an hour into the movie. I don't believe it's because they wanted to be efficient. I believe it's because they knew people would want to leave. If you go don't say I didn't warn you.