The lion scene though ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRvKs37vJzg )? Laughable man.

——————–

me: I watched The Happening per your request.

Andrew: and?

me: biggest waste of time this year as bad as Lady In the Water

Andrew: lol. you’re not alone. It has its moments though and I like to hypothesize a little bit on what “happened”

me: what are you talking about
the best moment was when Walhberg found himself talking to a tree.

Sent at 11:21 AM on Friday

Andrew: I like the idea of nature striking back (in a more “reaslistic” way – as opposed to vines literally attacking people).
I like how they were “savd” or kept safe by love.
I like the sort of Body Snatchers ending.
I really like some of the death scenes.
The way the one with the gun on the street was shot is awesome.

me: you’re loosing credibility as you type

Andrew: The bodies falling from the buildin is awesome.

me: yeah that totally made the movie

Sent at 11:23 AM on Friday

Andrew: http://www.rowthree.com/2008/06/16/r3-review-the-happening/
First comment sums it up exactly.

Sent at 11:25 AM on Friday

Andrew: Or even better:
http://www.rowthree.com/2008/06/17/cinecast-episode-90-maybe-youll-want-your-hearing/

me: no thanks
After reading your review and Marina’s I don’t need to go any further.
Once again I feel as if you have no clue what you’re talking about
Camp?
Even if was suppose to be “campy,” whaich I agree with, it fell short.
Not even close.
So I don’t give Shyamalan points for “trying.”
It fucking sucked.

Andrew: Fair enough. My review is actually pretty negative if actually read.

me: 3 1/2 stars sums it up.

Andrew: But there was enough there to make me enjoy it. Sometimes disasters are fun to watch.
Again, first comment sums it up exactly.

me: more like 1 1/2 stars. 1 for Zooey and 1/2 for originality.
you mean this… “I can definitely get the feel of what Shyamalan is at least attempting here.”
Please.

Andrew: Zooey sucked too. But I think she/they were going for 50′s, B-movie, pre-method acting style.

me: no need to pity someone who hasn’t done anything great since his first film…
But they didn’t pull it off.

Andrew: Some of it they do.
It’s not worth defending for me.

me: why would that change things.

Andrew: Shymalan has his tongue so far up his own ass it’s ridiculous.

me: so why would you give it 3.5 stars? That seems like a film rating worth defending.

Sent at 11:36 AM on Friday

Andrew: It means I liked a lot of aspects of the movie, I enjoyed myself, I would watch it again one day, but it’s not great film making.
Also…
This is the kind of movie a person is not going to change their mind on. I can only point out so much before giving up.
And to be honest there has been more Shyamalan talk on R3 than any other subject. Some of it is actually fuckin hilarious… but I’ve grown weary of it.

Sent at 11:38 AM on Friday

me: Well, you may want to defend your opinion a bit more. “I enjoyed it” doesn’t really fly. Especially for the one person I go to for their opinions about movies.

Sent at 11:41 AM on Friday

Andrew: I like the idea of nature striking back (in a more “reaslistic” way – as opposed to vines literally attacking people).
I like how they were “savd” or kept safe by love.
I like the sort of Body Snatchers ending.
I really like some of the death scenes.
The way the one with the gun on the street was shot is awesome.

Sent at 11:43 AM on Friday

Andrew: Not to mention there are pages of “defending” that I’ve steered you to. I can either cut and paste or re-type all the same stuff.
The spoiler edition of that cinecast goes pretty deep into The Happening.

me: i’m posting this…

Sent at 11:47 AM on Friday

Andrew: Unfortunately you can’t easily do a specific search at R3, if you could read what I’m reading right now it’s pretty funny. We have one guy that VERY passionately defends everything Shymalan has ever done.

me: he’s an idiot.

Andrew: This one is particularly amusing. We go on for days about the Aliens in “Signs” and the reasoning why they land on a planet filled with water – which is deadly to them.
http://www.rowthree.com/2008/04/09/what-is-earth-vs-moon/

me: Nature striking back story idea = originality, which equates to 1/2 of my stars.
The fact that they were saved by love = stupid, lazy writing.
Body Snatchers-esque ending = cliche

Andrew: “Body Snatchers-esque ending = cliche”
Really?

me: Death scenes = almost laughable

Andrew: wrong

me: except maybe the bodies falling in the beginning.

me: except maybe the bodies falling in the beginning.

Andrew: the gun in the street is great. You don’t even see the deaths, just hear them. Love it.
much creepier that way

me: creepy?

Andrew: definitely

me: come on. what i don’t get is why nobody can see that this film might have been decent had it not been directed by the Axl Rose of Hollywood.
Even that scene could have been better..

Sent at 11:56 AM on Friday

Andrew: I think the all “happy-go-lucky” ending is all acting (Body Snatchers-esque) to keep nature from killing them (Zooey and daughter).
The death is still happening, but they’ve figure out how to keep it at bay.
Did you watch “Blindness” yet? Ziskin didn’t like it all. It’s one of my top 10 of last year.

Sent at 11:59 AM on Friday

me: Instead it was force fed to the audience. And then he continues to explain it to us over and over again what’s going on, by showing us people dying different ways. We get it M Night. Get to the story. I’m sure the first idea he had for this movie was how cool he thought it would be to show people killing themselves in as many different ways he could think up. Those scenes take up like 30% of the film.

Sent at 12:00 PM on Friday

Andrew: I actually own this film. I’ll need to re-watch it at some point. The real question is, “what is the story?”
IS there a story?

me: yes, kinda.
but a bad one. And it could have been a short story.

Sent at 12:02 PM on Friday

me: I gotta run.
I’m feeling a slight breeze coming my way.
Just in case I don’t live, I wanted you to know that I had desert with this guy Joey the other night.
I’m sorry.

This was a pretty bad movie, but yes, it was very watchable for whatever thats worth. Its not un-entertaining. It has its moments where it is legitimately good, and a lot where it is legitimately bad. Aside from being ridiculous as a whole, Wahlberg is the truely bad element here and a different casting alone would have improved it immensely. Elliot is a humongous wimp, his ‘noooo’ scene is razzie worthy as is almost every time he’s talking at closeup. When a camera is in his face, he turns into a severely out of place, unintentionally hilarious goof that makes the recent SNL ‘talking to animals’ skit seem so much funnier.

At least we came to the same insight.

Oh wow. I must’ve just skimmed your review earlier because I didn’t notice you’d already made that exact same comparison about exposition.

Weird.

I’d be more interested in Shyamalan VS Von Trier. They’re both devisive and infuriating. I also think that Von Trier’s films are usually misinterpreted because he cloaks his films in a veil of esotericism.
It would actually be pretty difficult for me to explain why I love Von Trier but don’t like Shayamalan (although I used to) without sounding like I’m contradicting myself.

I do too. Which is why I find these reviews to be so off the wall.

Shayamalan has regressed as a filmmaker and tonally this film is a disaster area. I keep hearing this film compared to the The Mist and WotW But when Speilberg makes a movie I don’t hear people arguing about which scenes are a joke and which are suspensful. It seems to me that if your audience can’t tell the difference then you fucked up.

And it seems to me the “b movie” defense (I think they used that one at the R.Kelly trial) is completely at odds with the lofty excuses you guys are cooking up.
“It’s a fun b-movie! and also a complex tonal riddle that has to be decoded.”

I guess if you enjoyed it then you enjoyed it. There’s no debating that but it’s a little infuriating to hear everyone bend over backwards for this sloppy, poorly constructed psuedo-thriller that may or not also be a wacky comedy.

In our little Auteur Versus category around here, I’d love to see Shyamalan vs. Mamet!

If he intended it, its a failure, I think he wanted it to be as scary and intimidating as the earlier suicides or for instance, a much better version involving a kids birthday party video in SIGNS. I think he failed, but it just falls in with the howling ludicrousness of the film.\

@ Rusty “Just call the spade a spade, calling this film an “experiment” is just a ridiculous euphemism which avoids actual criticism”

Not completely, the film provided some very, very solid entertainment, and I happen to dig on wacky B-film stuff. The Happening hit my happy button more times than not. (And like Southland Tales, I tend to give the benefit kooky experiments…)

You people need to figure out what you want.

The iPhone scene was great over-the-top violence, no holds barred. If The Happening was meant to be taken seriously as a warning to humanity, Mark Wahlbergs character would have been different.

And because this seems like the most appropriate place (it just took too long to get up !), I will repost my review of The Happening. Feel free to skip if you already read:

After two amazing but generally misunderstood films M Night Shyamalan returns with The Happening. A title which has to be a candidate for the vaguest ever. As usual it has been nearly impossible to figure out what in the world the film is about beforehand, and that is just one of the reasons that Shyamalan with The Happening, again delivers a cinema experience like no other.

The Happening has a (for Shyamalan) brand new cast starring Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel and John Leguizamo, and (I’m sure to many peoples delight) no appearance by Shyamalan himself. Mark Wahlbergs performance in The Happening is incredibly difficult to get a hold of. His diction is among the strangest I can remember hearing a grown man speak, it is almost like when a finnish man questioningly tries his luck in English, and it can get annoying at times, but you can’t help but wonder why somebody would speak like that. It does make him alittle more interesting I think.

Zooey Deschanel in front of a camera is close to being the best idea since somebody came up with wrapping a sausage in bacon. She has a fantastic face, it can sometimes be distracting to the plot to have her in a close-up, and even though her acting gets alittle too cute at times, she carries it. She’s a coming star, who we’ll hopefully get to see a lot more of.
In his latest films Shyamalan has more or less attempted consciously to alienate the audience, and created plot threads, characters and entire universes so peculiar, special and seemingly disjointed that most people check out at the halfway point. The Happening is not as extreme as his latest two films, but it does contain elements which can be hard to swallow for a sceptic audience. But that is their loss. The only difference between The Happening and countless other Hollywood-movies with far out concepts, is that Shyamalan does not attempt to apologize for his ideas, and doesn’t try to shape an entire reality based around getting one little concept to work.
But The Happening is in no way inaccesible. This is Shyamalan in entertainmentmode, and he serves delicious set pieces with a flair and an elegance worthy of Steven Spielberg. The enormous difference is that Shyamalan in The Happening is cold, cynical, vicious and unforgiving. There is no dear mom in Shyamalans universe, there is no salvation, and that is wonderful! For once it actually hurts to watch an entertainmentfilm from Hollywood, and there are still some of us who appreciate that.
One of the most amazing things about Shyamalan is that he like no other living director can create uneasyness on the screen. His mood-driven tension is like a dial he can turn up or down anytime he wants. Horrorfilms usually don’t affect me, I’m not scared, they fall on their face. Shyamalan, with very simple methods, brings me completely into the mood – it’s pretty fucking scary man.
The Happening is an entertainmentfilm with an auteurflair that’s lacking in Hollywood. Even though Shyamalan in a way has gone back to the well to regain goodwill both among audiences and in the industry, he hasn’t forgotten himself. When you add to that craftsmanship on the level of a Stanley Kubrick, you’ve got a cinema experience which nobody should cheat themselves out of. The Happening is possibly this summers best American film!

So, am I to understand you’re doing a 180 on Lady In The Water?

I understand that some bad films inspire introspection but these reviews are absurd.

@ “The performances are terrible but I believe they are meant to be”

brilliant. I forget, is there an acadamy award for “worst performance”?

@ “a wholly unnecessary (and perhaps unintentionally) hilarious iPhone”

Seriously, we’re actually going to argue that Shaymalam was aiming for hillariously terrible with that scene?

I don’t hate the film or anything and there are some really effective bits inserted randomly into the abyss of lameness. But over all it’s a tepid and bizarre failure. Just call the spade a spade, calling this film an “experiment” is just a ridiculous euphemism which avoids actual criticism.

Also, as far as technical proficiency this is a career low for the formerly talented Shayamalan. He’s never felt so clumsy and cliched before.

I watched Red Belt last night. Loved it, I need to see it again to process the ending. In any case it’s clearly my favorite Dave Mamet directing effort. Shyamalan should take a lesson on exposition from Mamet, he makes it look effortless.

The TV and News stuff reminded me a bit of a distilled down “Would you Like To Know More?” from Starship Troopers (or more pure, the “You Gives us Three minutes and We’ll give you the World” segments from Robocop.

The ‘debates’ on the news stations. The crazy ‘little girl’ on a cell phone bit. The iPhone was definitely wacky SST territory….popping limbs!

Well with what I took from the film, the exposition wasn’t there at all. But I think what I took away from the movie is a different message than everyone else. We’ll talk soon.

Hey Ross, I can 100% understand not liking this film, I do not support it for anything integral to the film, I enjoy it for the mess it is, intentional or not.

Yea Ross, but we’ve seen the bloody bomb go off in a thousand different disaster blockbusters. I’ll prefer M. Night’s wacky experiments over some of the so-straight-forward-banality of many of the usual CGI fests. In fact, the premise here allowed for a minimal use of CGI which was rather refreshing here.

That being said, I’m still at odds with LADY IN THE WATER, mainly because it seems to be M. Night making love to himself for much of the run-time.

Really? There was so much tangential exposition in the film, that he held my hand until he twisted it out of my arm-socket. Oh that Lion Tamer Shyamalan!

I make this analogy: it’s like one of those exaggerated bombs with the lit fuse from an old cartoon – the film is like the part ohere the fuse has been little and it’s fizzing along and we’re all waiting on the seemingly inevitable explosion. But when it gets a milimetre from exploding the fuse stops and the credits roll.

I should hold him on trial, but every time Mark Wahlberg spoke, I was chuckling with honest joy. And then when the crazy-lady showed up. Bliss. Bonus points with Dante Hicks driving the Jeep and ‘out-running’ the wind.

My wife would never watch this movie however due to the *****SPOILER*****violent kid killing going on.