Macaque Talks Back

MIST

Let me just say upfront that this movie compares favorably with Gone With The Wind…in that both movies feature weather-related titles. After the title though, I think its fair to say that the plots of The Mist and GWTW couldnt be more different. One movie is a sweeping epic set in the South on the brink of the Civil War and considered the greatest film of all time and one features demon-insects that live in, get this, FOG. Not mist. Mist, in fact, plays a very small role in The Mist. In fact, a lot of things play a small role in The Mist including among other things plot, acting, effects, intelligence and ironically the aforesaid mist. This movie should have been called The Fog. Actual mist does not get as thick as fog. Sure, both fog and mist feature water particles suspended in air but a fair definition of mist is very light fog that I can totally see through. Not opaque, vision blocking fog so thick that….well its thick I tell ya. But there already was a movie called The Fog so they went with mist. Personally, I think a better title would have been The Poorly Conceived Demon-Insect Fog.  Other titles that I am sure they could have gone with include The Dampness, The Water globules Trapped in Air, and Light Fog. As for the actual movie? Do you hate old people, our military, young children, housewives, country folk, Maine, grocery store clerks, or women? Have you ever watched The Andy Griffith Show and wished that a pack of vicious demons would rip apart the loveable townfolk one at a time while Andy watches? When you see people commit countless selfless acts in the face of great danger, do you hope they will be punished over and over again? Then this movie is for you! Our filmmakers hate people. Period. Most of their anger will end up being directed at YOU (the audience). But the string of increasingly twisted deaths of harmless town yokels is not why The Mist blows. No, its the string of increasingly unbelievable decisions and reactions made by the main characters in the face of, well, an invasion by some admittedly big insects. But let me just jump straight to the end. Spoiler alert. I am gonna blow the surprise ending just in case you care. So get this, the main characters whose names I have already forgotten decide that they have to go into the fog…i mean mist and make a break for freedom. They have been trapped in a crappy Soviet era grocery store that carried a LOT of dogfood and very little alcohol and having murdered the only christian (who was portrayed as crazy bananas, evil and, most offensively, annoying) our heroes realize that maybe there isnt really that much mist. So they make a break for the car (an SUV in this case which probably gets about 15 mpg on the highway). The survivors, which include a child, 2 old people, a young woman and our “hero” drive around town for awhile and confirm that everything in Maineberry is destroyed and that our hero’s wife was totally eaten by spiders. His reaction was mildly upset (which is the first emotion he has shown in the face of the mist–wait he was really upset when the grocery store employees killed some dude he didnt know for being a useless jerk but I digress). So they decide to drive until they run out of gas and see how the rest of the world is doing. BY my math, even if he had just topped off his tank, he really could only have gotten about 300 miles tops and probably got more like 50 or 60 miles down the road. At which point, despite the fact that he has not quit in the face of every disaster for 2 hours, and despite the fact that 50 miles of Maine highway should not be construed as the rest of the world, he gives up and murders his child, the old people and the cute chick. The end. Oh, he doesnt kill himself and it turns out the ENTIRE pool of survivors from the grocery store has been following him in an army truck for hours and, just to finish insulting the audience the fog…i mean mist lifts right then in a cliché on par with any Bruce Willis action movie. I could continue ranting about just how bad this movie blows (why do demon tentacles only melt on contact with air while our hero watches?) but instead, I have reached the conclusion that, for the filmmakers, everything sucks and the only people who had a worse 2 hours than our hero is the audience.  This film should have been called the Pist.

2012

2012. The end of the planet Earth if the Mayan prophecy is true. Something about the Sun destroying the planet.  Either that or their calendar ran out of wall space.  2012. Also the name of a, well for lack of a better word, movie starring John Cusack and a bunch of nameless actors that, presumably, were wandering around the movie lot on casting day. Let the record show this movie should have been called plot coincidence theater.  Let the record show that tens of millions of dollars were spent on the completely unbelievable effects for this film. Massive sequences where fake buildings and computer generated mountains are consumed by polygonal fire and cgi water. And somehow, Cusack and his family, featuring an untrained amateur pilot, 2 drooling kids and Amanda Peete (best known for not surviving the second Xfiles movie–that and anorexia) defy the laws of physics, the laws of cgi physics, the laws of commonsense, the laws of nature, man, God, Parcheesi and any other laws you could name…yes somehow…but I am getting ahead of myself. The plot of this film is simple. The world is gonna end. The governments know and secretly build big ol’ ships to rescue the human race from the destruction and then fill them with rich Arabs and Playboy models..ok that is the only part of the film which is believable (that, given a chance a government would save the rich and pretty first, not that the government would build ships in China….did I mention all the world saving ships are in China?). But I am getting ahead of myself. Cusack, playing himself, discovers the impending end of the world one day before everyone else based on the ramblings of a very drunk Woody Harrelson (played by himself). …look the plot is junk. Lets talk about the goal of this film. The goal of this film appears to be a test to see if it can burn the suspension of disbelief out of even the densest disaster porn fan. And it succeeds beyond even the wildest dreams of its crack-addled creators. In the first Cusack escape sequence, he rescues his family from their house just as The Big One hits California. Just in time, they take the family limo and race through the disintegrating streets of LA as every single thing around them blows up except for a line of asphalt straight to the private airport…look the plot is not important. But there is a recurring theme. See if you can guess it. Lets reconstruct the Limo sequence. Barely board car. Everything explodes except them. Limo at one point has to jump an absurdly enormous hole in the road.. They get to a plane and board just as the airport explodes. They get airborne just as they run out of asphalt again….they fly to Yosemite National Park (it doesn’t matter why). Cusack ends up racing ahead of an earthquake in a camper, jumps a ridiculously huge hole and barely boards the aforesaid plane as they barely escape their second earthquake of the day and a giant erupting volcano. They end up in Vegas where, once again they barely board a Russian plane (chock full of people they already knew) while everything explodes….never mind. Lets talk about the science….ok lets ignore the science. Lets accept the premise that there is enough extra water in the ocean to cover Mount Everest but to leave Africa untouched (oops blew the ending). Lets accept that the newer government satellites can literally map the entire world over and over again while simultaneously correctly predicting multiple tsunamis….lets pretend that China is the best place to build really big boats….questions still remain. Why, for example, as all of India is destroyed by a huge flood, do cell phones still work? I mean, according to the omniscient satellite data being fed to air force one (which now has enough computers on board to make the Millennium Falcon look like a hunk of junk) all ground communication has been destroyed. But apparently one cell tower in India survived earthquakes, fire, and flood to help our backup hero (not Cusack) listen to his buddy drown. Look, that whole plotline really wasn’t central to the film….much like every plotline of the film. The title of this movie should have been Plot Coincedence Theater starring John Cusack. You do not believe me yet? OK. Without going into the reasons WHY, the entire continent of Asia moved 1000 miles straight towards Cusacks third plane. Yep. End of Act 2. Asia accidently moves 1000 miles….Look, I do not know how to end this review. But then the makers of this movie did not how to end it either.  I mean, Africa is untouched? Do they think the Somali warlords are going to welcome 400000 white people into their country with open arms? They were already having famine before the end of the world. I do have one more point to make…If I am ever in charge of deciding what people and animals to save in the event of the end of the world (though technically just the end of a few continents), I am not saving the rhinos. Sorry, giraffes do NOT make the cut over extra Playboy models (did I mention they saved a bunch of random animals…no sign of chickens and cows but whatever).