6/18/08

I promised a review of M. Night Shyamalamadingdong’s latest attempt to live up to being called “a modern day Hitchcock.” I'm not sure if anyone but me ever called him that but that does seem to be who he’s emulating. Now, before I go too much further I want to point out that I have really liked, well I've liked all of his movies so far. I've gone into the last two or three thinking, “Ok, this is the one where he’s going to let me down.” So far he hasn’t. Perhaps it is lowered expectations making them work for me, I don’t know. Anyhoo, so I went into seeing “What’s Happening: The Movie” with the same lowered expectations I had for “The Village.” It was for the best that I did because I really think I would have been disappointed with it had I not. I mean come on, Rog and Rerun weren’t even in it for crying out loud! No one even said, “Hey hey hey!” Not even once! Oh sure, the ever so delectable Zooey Deschanel is in it… mmm, Zooey Deschanel. Sorry I got distracted. Um, where was I? I'm not sure where I was going with that. Ok seriously, while the film is a bit thin on plot, kind of like the way space is thin on air, I didn’t hate this movie. I'm not sure how much I should say about it for fear of being a “spoiler.” Also, I'm not sure just which twist is the twist MNS was going for. Aw hell, if you don’t want the movie spoiled, stop reading here. So here’s the poop, “What’s Happening: The Movie” is, more or less, a two hour long rant about how evil people are and how the plants have had enough. Yes, I said “plants.” That was the first twist. Now I know I'm going to be accused of being “that guy,” like the ones who said, “I knew he was dead all along” about “The Sixth Sense,” but I really did figure out it was the plants when the second “attack” happened in a greenbelt park sort of situation. By the way, I was told that Bruce Willis was dead all along before seeing “The Sixth Sense” and was still suckered in by the time I got around to seeing it. I'll be the first to admit that one got me with the twist. But I digress. Ok, so the plants have had enough and are beginning to secrete or emit a neurotoxin which suppresses the human “self preservation” instinct. This, of course, leads everyone afflicted to kill themselves. John made an interesting point that suppression of that particular instinct probably wouldn’t be enough to make everyone up and shoost themselves in the head. I had no argument either way since I just don’t know. We might all be lemmings at heart after all. As an aside, lemmings do not actually throw themselves off of cliffs in a suicidal rampage every once in a while. Apparently the biologists studying lemmings backed the little critters into a corner so that leaping off a cliff to their deaths was their only way out. It’s like the Indians assuming buffalo run themselves off cliffs because they are suicidal. No, y'all herded them off the cliff. But I digress yet again. I think the whole thing would have been a whole lot scarier if the plants suppressed the, for lack of a better term because I'm too lazy to try and think of it, “Thou shall not kill” instinct. That, my friends, would have been a whole hell of a lot creepier. But Mr. Shyamalamadingdong didn’t call me, or if he did I didn’t get the message. Well, ok now that I'm thinking about it, something that makes us kill ourselves is creepier; something that makes us kill each other is scarier. Ok, both involve loss of control of Juan’s life but the latter seems a more believable scenario. I don’t know. So, twist number one is that it is the plants attacking. Once they stop their attack, which leads me to ask, “How do we know they are done attacking?” everyone just goes on with their lives. Then comes twist number two, or at least what I'm assuming is twist number two, it happens in Paris! Ooh, scary! So, yeah that’s really about all there is to it. I told you the thing was not the heartiest, stick to your ribs meal out there. But you know what? Sometimes I like a bowl of broth for a change. I'll tell y'all about the least politically correct film since “Team America, World Police” tomorrow.