tomntempe

The premise , selling years of your life to others, is interesting. At first, the way they presented it, I thought it was not your life but your memories being sold. But that would be a different, and probably more interesting, movie. Nope, you're selling your life. At that point still a believable premise. Then it becomes ridiculous. Rich people with insane plots to force someone to honor the sale of their life, which they used as collateral. Come on, they literally drag the woman away to drain her years of life away. No sane society would force someone to fulfill a contract like that. Yet aside from that the society is presented as sane. In the end it amounted to little more than the usual car chases, machine guns being shot, all the usual cliches wrapped around the little nugget of the idea you could sell years of your life.

Bros attempts to explore the bond between two friends? Lovers?, but unfortunately, it falls flat in its execution, leaving the audience yearning for more substance and depth. The film revolves around two gay guys, supposedly best friends in a relationship with somewhat different life focus. While this premise may sound promising, the movie squanders its potential with its lackluster storytelling, shallow character development, horrible casting for the lead, and a misguided attempt at humor.

From the very beginning, Bros struggles to find its footing. The opening scenes are riddled with clichés and forced humor, setting a tone that the movie fails to recover from. The jokes, predominantly aimed at gay boy humor, seem dated and cringe-worthy, appealing only to the lowest common denominator. The dialogue attempts to be witty and engaging, but it ultimately feels hollow and unoriginal, making it difficult to invest in the characters' relationships.

The central characters are a significant letdown in this film. Both protagonists lack depth and dimension, making it challenging to empathize with their predicaments. Their friendship is supposed to be the emotional anchor of the movie, but it never truly resonates with the audience. Instead of showing a nuanced portrayal of a relationship, the film resorts to tired tropes and superficial interactions, leaving us disinterested and detached from their journey.

Furthermore, Bros seems to have no idea what it wants to say or explore beyond its central concept. The lack of a compelling plot or clear direction hinders any chance of emotional investment in the story. It feels as though the filmmakers were content to rely solely on the the presumed charisma of the lead actors, of which there was none, to carry the movie, neglecting the crucial elements that make a film memorable and impactful.

Even the supporting cast struggles to breathe life into this lackluster production. Most characters are poorly written, reduced to one-dimensional stereotypes or merely serving as eye candy for the primary target audience.

Visually, Bros offers nothing innovative or visually stimulating. The cinematography is mundane, and the overall production values lack the polish expected from a modern film. The lack of creativity in shot composition and visual storytelling further contributes to the movie's overall blandness.

Finally, the pacing of Bros drags on interminably, making its already thin plot feel even more stretched and tedious. Many will be looking for the exits 5 minutes in. By the halfway point, the rest of the audience will find themselves checking their watches, longing for the end credits to roll and release them from the tedium.

In conclusion, Bros is a forgettable and uninspired attempt at exploring gay friendship and bonding. The lack of compelling characters, weak storytelling, and dated humor makes it difficult to recommend this film to anyone seeking a meaningful cinematic experience. A genuine exploration of gay relationships deserves much better than what Bros has to offer, leaving the audience with a profound sense of wasted potential.

I refrained from reviewing this till I'd given it a good look. I did read some of the reviews before watching it and saw that it was mostly loved by did get a fair number of low ratings. Having been disappointed with most of the shows after TOS, except TNG, I was not expecting much from this and in particular, just before starting to watch SNW I tried Discovery. OMG talk about a disaster, that might be the worst of them all but were not here to talk it that.

I'm 8 episodes in and they have all been between 7 and 10's. There were a few characters/castings that it took me till episode 8 to finally warm up to. But overall, the casting is terrific, the acting excellent, the scripts good to excellent. In a world in which watchable sci-fi is rare, this is a gem.

If there is one thing not quite there yet is this... In TOS there was wonderful chemistry between the three leads, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Here the chemistry is a little weaker and not as focused, when I say weaker, I mean there is not the strong trio with everyone else revolving around it. That's not necessarily bad and not a criticism, just an observation. The chemistry is good between roughly the top 5 cast members.

Two criticisms I think are unfair is that the crew is too woke and too familiar with each other. As to woke, ST has always had a bit of woke in it and while there might be a bit more in this it's not "bad woke", it's little more than repeating the ideas like the golden rule and keeping sexist stereotyping within reasonable levels. I am not feeling like I'm being preached to. As to the crew being too familiar... I do see that they are a bit more familiar then the earlier shows generally were but don't see it being unacceptable levels. This is not a military ship, it's needs order, but it doesn't need rank order the same way military does. I think the balance struck is fine.

Two of the best bits of casting are Captain Pike and Spock. Captain Pike is entirely believable as the same guy as the original Chris Pike who came and went in the Pilot episode of TOS. And Peck as Spock really fits the part, the look and sound is uncanny.

Live long and Prosper and Explore new worlds.

The actual story is OK but you have to suffer thru endless pointless fight scenes that go on interminably and everyone knows how they will end. It really gets tedious. The special effects also suffer from having all been seen before in one form or another. So while the multiarmed thing is pincherIng it's way to get spiderman all I can think is cool graphics, I know who wins in the end so there's no tension or drama. The whole movie is that way, no real tension or drama.

The original spiderman premise was that spiderman is special but not exactly supernatural. He was bitten by a spider and got superhuman powers.. fine.. but he's not a god, not a magician and the events don't take place in a magical fairyland. In this movie they added way too much MAGIC to the spiderman universe... was I watching spiderman or Merlin? Looks like part of the reason was to set things up for future Doctor Stange movies.

The best part of the movie is when the two previous Spidermen appear in order to give the current Spiderman some moral and physical support. That part was really well written and enjoyable to watch. Tobey McGuire will always be my favorite spiderman. Tom Holland just doesn't have any gravitas for the part and Andrew Garfield looks too rabbinical.

If you are any sort of Spiderman movie fan you will enjoy the movie regardless of these shortcomings.

It started out so pointlessly boring I skipped ahead. .. and kept skipping.. till I was 20 minutes in. At that point it went from boring to stupid. At 25 in I threw in the towel.

After reading some of the negative reviews here I almost didn't watch it. Glad I watched. As one reviewer said, it's a bit like an extended X-files episode. That's not a bad thing, especially today when most of what passes for sci-fi is little more than cowboys in space with both sides shooting at each other with "advanced" weapons that cannot hit the side of a barn.

The Premise here is aliens are on earth and using Climate change as cover for their plot to warm up the earth quickly (they like it hot) so they can displace us.

No need to detail all that happens, suffice it to say there are a few minor twists but no real surprises. Yet it flows along well, characters get just the amount of development they need and no more. No huge plot holes once you accept the premises that underlay the aliens being here in the first place.

It seems like Bill Shatner still gets his share of negativity, his ego, etc. I will echo another ego, Scott Adams, if you've accomplished something don't you have a reason to have "ego"? You have to have ego to be writing reviews on IMDB. And you need the ego of Shatner, including the fact that he's also a Captain, to get the other Captains to really be open in answering questions.

Bill does a wonderful job interviewing people and bringing out things they usually don't surface. This is not a new skill for him but I don't think he gets the credit he deserves. At one point Patrick Stewart is almost in tears. Many interviews only treat us to a display of the persona of the person, BIll manages to get the real person to come forward.. except perhaps with Avery Brooks.

Brooks natural persona seems to be that of a philosophy professor leading a class on "Intro to Deep Thoughts". It's not that it's a bad class, it's just that it's not going to be much more then superficial and Avery never goes deeper than superficial. In place of actually saying something meaty he plays jazz riffs on the piano, which he is very good at. He gives off a vibe of having just toked some good weed and shares the same level of insight good weed produces.

Bill commiserates with Stewart and Bakula, and to a degree, Mulagrew over the effects of their career work on their home life and marriages. All got divorced as a result. All realize, some to a greater or lessor degree, that it was a choice and to a greater and lessor degree they accept blame for that choice while acknowledging they would probably do it again. Pine is too young for this to be an issue plus he's never been married. Avery is unique in my view because I view him as the least successful, least invested in the part, captain and my suspicions are that he was the least impacted of all of them by the demands of the show. Nothing he said suggested otherwise.

In the Captains relationship discussions the thing that seemed obvious to me, but which they only obliquely acknowledged, was that their primary relationships where with the show, the other primary cast members and the crew. The show and it's 10 to 18 hour days became their de facto "personal life" and of course their life outside of it suffered greatly.

Mulgrews commiseration is a bit different. She felt the weight of being a woman in a man's world and discusses, with Bill's prompting, the "hormonal" issues that create a different set of hurdles for women in leadership positions inside and outside of Hollywood.

Bakula was the most clear, with Shatner not far behind, that they were incredibly fortunate to have the life they've had. None seem to still feel, as some clearly did at one point, that being "a captain" has been more of a curse than a blessing. Of all of them Avery seems the most removed, his Captaincy seems much more like a past episode from which he has moved on. Shatner admits he tried to, that he fought it but is at peace with it now. Similarly for Stewart, he knows his legacy will not be King Lear but will be Captain Pickard and he's ok with that.

Perhaps the most poignant part of the show was a young man with the illness and appearance of Stephan Hawking. He is a huge trek fan who is attending a ST Convention with his mothers aid. He can speak only a little in a whisper to his mother. Bill talks with him and makes his day. They also appear to have brought him to the behind the scenes area to meet some of the other people.

I recall from Shatners book how he talks about questions like "what did you do after ST ended, you were famous and the world was your oyster right!" . Shatner relates that no, he was divorced and broke and he thought "What now? How will I make a living?" He writes that since he had to eat he was going to do what he needed to do and shove on. And he has. In some ways he's quite underrated. He does wonderful interviews. He has a gift of making people comfortable and opening up. In many ways he's "been there" and people can relate to him.

He closes the show with some musing on death and what happens in a chat with Scott. Neither really quite say.

Beam me up Scotty!

I'm not exactly a trekkie but I've read several books on both ST:TOS and ST:TNG so this isn't my first exposure to the "dirt". From all I've seen and read elsewhere this show rings true. It also has some new info I'd not run across before.

Contrary to some reviewers I thought the pacing was fine, the graphics were a nice touch and it was really even handed in it's treatment of people. There were a couple of spots with bad editing such as one segment which begins with them talking about someone but they failed to include any intro to tell you who they were talking about. It took a minute to figure out who it was.

As a viewer I disagree with many of the people interviewed who suggest that the first two seasons were not very good. Seasons 1 and 2 may have had a different focus but as a viewer of them without any foreknowledge that they supposedly weren't as good I never felt that way. They were fine.

One interesting aspect revealed by the interviews is that there was much turmoil and angst going on almost the whole series. What they experienced did not, IMHO, come across negatively in the final product. To hear them tell it there were at least half a dozen people who in one way or another literally saved the show from going down in flames. The reality, again from a viewer's perspective, was that the show was fine throughout production and that the behind the scenes melodrama, which makes interesting background, wasn't actually all that big a deal to the final result. The drama of "I'll quit", or "you'll never work in this town again." add spice to people's lives but the show had a life of it's own and the two, while intertwined, did have their own lives.

One of my favorite parts was early on discussing the casting of Picard. Many were considered but Patrick Stewart was not viewed as a serious contender in part due to his baldness. They relate the story of flying his cheap toupee from the UK to the US for a final casting call where he wore it. He left and took it off and then got a quick callback. He returned sans toupee. As Bill Shatner and others discuss all this toupee related trivia I kept looking at Shatner's toupee generated hair and wondering what was going thru his mind and whether he might have a typically Shatneresque remark. Sadly he did not.

All and all a fun hour with some worthy tidbits for the Star Trek aficionado.

Black holes ought to be interesting but they put so much boring filler around that subject that you'll think your IN a black hole. Plus they peppered it will dumb speculation based on what we DON'T know to suggest all we do know is an illusion. Utter tripe punctuated with erie music.

I love this series. But come on man, you don't have the HIghway Patrol escort a shipment of a highly dangerous drum of radioactive material to its destination and then turn it over to a flunky. And even if you did you (the patrol, the management people, the supervisor where were there to receive it) would not all just walk away and leave it with a single flunky. A flunky who's completely alone and unsupervised as he carelessly wheels it across the roof of the building only to have it fall off the cart, roll off the roof, and splat to the sidewalk below raising a small cloud of radioactive dust. Which also means that you didn't even double contain this extremely dangerous material but just filled what amounts to a large milk jug with it and put on a pressed in place cap. Come on man....

Watched this as a kid and loved it. 60 years later found it on youtube and started watching it. Yes, the highway patrol doesn't do most of what the show has them do, so what, it's entertainment based on generalizing all police work into one agency. One of the things I like is that the cast really seems like real people, but real people who can deliver a line.. the acting quality is realistic. Of course Crawford holds it all together, the guy in charge, listening, evaluating, and by gosh deciding on a course of action all in about 15 seconds. Lights, camera, action was never more true.. or more compressed. Yet it works. It rarely seems corney, it captures your attention from the first note of the theme song all the way thru to Matthews delivering his admonition at the end.

One of it's charms is that it's not all cops and robbers, surprisingly it tackles some of the important questions we still wrestle with today .. like how do we get an ex-con back into society, do people deserve a second chance, that the police are not the judge or jury.

It has very little blood and guts. Sure there are shootings and some people might die but unlike todays shows with explosions and massive shooting scenes, buildings being stormed, HP is far more realistic of routine crime that might have some gun play. A few bullets fired is all there is in the majority of episodes with guns fired. Only occasionally is there anything like a running gun battle. All are far more realistic than current day cop gunplay. The main thing unrealistic is Matthews rarely does much aiming, he just sort of points in the general direction and fires... and usually hits the target.

This is one of the best episodes overall when watching these shows in 2021. As with all Highway Patrol episodes this is well written and tightly paced. The actors all bring a genuineness to their parts that few actors today do, partly because today such genuineness would seem too mild .. characters today all need to jump off the screen. But in Highway Patrol it's left to Dan Matthews to be the star and the guy who jumps off the screen, the rest generally seem like real people albeit perhaps better dressed.

The basic plot here is that a Professor has a heart attack while getting gas at a station and while getting some help inside the crooked station attendant steals his diamonds out of the Professor's glove box. After the Professor drives away he gets worse, pulls over and collapses. Officer Johnson responds and impounds his car and the officer's inventory shows no diamonds are in the car. The Professor dies and the daughter accuses Officer Johnson of theft.

Matthews and the Highway Patrol spring into action and find the crooks. All standard plot line but....

The thing I really liked was how well written the dialogue was between the accusing daughter and Matthews and between Matthews and Johnson when Johnson wants to turn in his badge. Quickly mentioned was how the press needs THE STORY NOW and how there is an anti-cop attitude by many. It seems so "today" in so many ways yet it was written over 60 years ago. The more things change the more they stay the same.

This series is a real gem and shows you don't need to spend big bucks to make an engrossing, well written, well acted show.

If the original Perry Mason TV show was a 10, at best these movies are a 6. I gave this a 4 because Drake does even more stupid stuff than usual. I have to think that in order to get "Della" to sign on to do these movies she required them to hire her son to play the Paul Drake character. Aside from hair color he is completely wrong for the part.... One of the worst instances of miss-casting ever. William Katt just does not have the gravitas to play the Experienced Detective and on top of that the writers continually have him doing the stupidest of things which either tip off his hand or put him in situations where it's him against multiple people where he walks in begging to be cut off at the knees. In this movie he repeatedly creates situations in which his quarry gets away. In the woods, in the store, at the motel, on the highway he stupidly goes in with little or no planning and no backup, lets himself be seen and the quarry rabbits away. Infuriatingly stupid.

As to the movie itself, if the stupidity was removed I'd give it a 6 because it's a slightly different approach to a murder and because unlike the first 4 movies in the series it seems Burr had been feeling better (or the directors were more insistent he be a little bit animated) and was able to bring some semblance of life to his part. In the first 4 movies he was figuratively phoning it in.

Watched this over a couple days. The first part of the first episode set my teeth on edge. The production is done by biggies in Hollywood and focuses on people who were or would be biggies in Hollywood back in WW2 and after. As such there was an undertone of "aren't we special". At times almost like they thought what these movie folks were doing for the war effort was one of the most important things being done to win the war. As a long time reader of WW2 history I found it quite irritating. Some of the "stars" of this production were given unearned commissions at pretty high levels, given staff and to a large degree got away with stuff that would have put a regular GI in the stockade, like just driving off for days at a time cuz the mood struck them. That's not to say the're contributions were not worthwhile but they were not hero's even though they try to present them as such.

Because of that I rated it a 6 overall. Part 2 wasn't as bad but in part 3 the "we're so special" came back in force. Considering it for it's documentary quality it's good but no better than most ww2 documentaries and not as good as some on youtube.

I've recently been reading WW2 histories. .. and have watched many documentaries on same. This movie fails on every level, it's not technically actuate, morally accurate, human nature accurate, or historically accurate.

It is nothing but a cliche fest. Starting with the opening scene it's just cliche after cliche after cliche. .. delivered with sophomoric dialogue. Others have detailed it's many failings in regard to weaponry and tactics and simple logic. Norman's question to his team when he first arrives says it all... Almost the first thing out o his mouth is... "Where's the front?" what kind of idiot would write such trite dialog? The whole movie is like that.

I won't go farther with this because there are already plenty of other reviews covering the same failings. I did want to get my 1 star rating in just for the record. This movie is a POS.

TOS and TNG showed how to make watchable SF. DS9 and Voyager showed how to coast on the past. Enterprise shows how to ruin it all. Hackneyed, formulaic, predictable, unwatchable.

Many spoilers...

First, Beverly Crusher is a MEDICAL doctor, not a theoretical physicist. That she would be following and organizing research on Metaphasic Shields is ludicrous. But let that slide. She thinks a Ferengi has developed his theory into a working shield but all the other mean scientists except a small handful won't even look at his work. So what's Beverly to do... Oh, she'll organize a mini-conference to showcase the shield. So 4 disparate world scientist come on board to see this shield in action. A scientist by definition bases their thinking on Seeing and Verifying and since this is the far future they surely are even better at this then we 21st century folks are. But even though the Ferengi has developed a working shield 2 of the four are prepared to dismiss it out of hand and the other two don't seem to have much confidence in it either.

So what would scientists logically do? They would outfit a REMOTELY operated shuttle with the shield and see if it worked. They would not put one of the scientists, who's never used the field before, and who's never flown this particular shuttle before, on the shuttle simply to operate the steering wheel, brakes and accelerator. But no, they argue about who should go on what presumably half of them think is a suicide mission. Just plain stupid.

Of course things go wrong and we get a Sherlock Holmes version of Beverly Crusher who's convinced it was murder, that the shield was sabotaged. And to show her high regard for Captain Picard she disobeys his direct order and performs an autopsy that goes against Ferengi Cultural norms. Meanwhile everyone acts like a shield that performed almost perfectly, except for letting some tachyons thru that killed the pilot, is a TOTAL FAILURE and the whole thing should just be abandoned. Really, you give up that easily??? Just plain stupid.

But she's out to prove the shield DOES work.. yet the obvious way to prove it would be to simply test it again, this time without letting anyone near it to sabotage it. And to remotely pilot it. As we saw the first time, all the sensor readings are able to be remotely read, programing the shuttle to execute a series of automatic turns and return would be child's play.

But no, this time Beverly takes the shuttle to prove it works. But the dastardly villain has snuck on board. Somehow he's escaped from the murphy bed medical chamber he's been held in, no one noticed him busting out and now he's hidden in the shuttle. And at just the right moment he springs out like a Bond Villain to confront Beverly and spill his guts about his motives and plans. Giving Beverley time to get the drop on him and phaser him in the gut.

Beverly returns triumphant and Jean-Luc welcomes back one of his senior officers who has been a very bad girl disobeying him. Figurative high fives all around... Board of Inquiry cancelled.

Just a really really bad episode.

I saw this several years ago. Lately I've been reading several books about Star Trek origins and behind the scenes. Solow, Justman, Roddenberry, Shatner, Nimoy and also some interviews. Most recently was Nimoy's "I Am Spock". He talks about this movie at length and the care that went into it, how great he thought the script was, how great the acting was and on and on.

What I recalled from my prior viewing of the movie was that at best it was mediocre yet from Nimoy's accounts I got the feeling I must have missed something. So I watched it again.

From almost the opening sequence it was plodding and dull. As it unfolded I was struck with the contrast of TOS uniforms to the winged-monkey uniforms that were designed for III. The original uniforms just seemed right, these new ones seem like something one would only wear to a state dinner, not while operating a Starship.

This incongruity of tone seems endemic to almost every aspect of the movie. With the exception of Shatner (Kirk) no one seems particularly good at delivering their lines, it seems more like they are rehearsing then filming the actual movie. The whole story seems like a series of scenes mashed together rather than an organic flow. For example, Uhura seems to appear out of nowhere in the late middle of the movie to advance a plot point.. how'd she get there, who sent her?

And the sets... Cheesy X10, often little better than the sets used for various planet surfaces in TOS, but there it was understandable, a weekly show on a shoestring budget, this was a multimillion dollar movie! Even the inside the Spaceship's sets seem claustrophobic in many scenes.

Then there is Kruge, played by Reverend Jim. Not the slightest bit believable, none of the Klingon stuff was particularly believable. I know, it's just a movie, but you don't conquer worlds and lead crews by shooting crew members for idiotic reasons. Is this an epic movie or a cartoon?

In the end the difference that made TOS so good was it was believable, one of Roddenberry's primary goals..Almost nothing about STIII is believable and to make matters worse much of it isn't even well done. Poorly choreographed actions, poorly thought out set designs, poorly light, poorly acted, poorly edited... Yet I did give it a 4 because the underlying story had merit and potential and occasionally became engrossing... if only that potential had been better developed.

This episode plays out like a movie of the week much more than a TV show. Burr in particular is far more animated and engaged in this episode than he has been for several seasons. Rather than the lumbering and often disinterested delivery of his lines that he fell into around season 7 he seems actually interested in being part of the show.

Also unlike most episodes the courtroom portion doesn't play out in a preliminary hearing but as an actual trial with a jury.. A jury which Mason addresses with a significant amount of dialog.

While the guy who plays the accused cop delivers an over the top performance as he chews on the scenery the eventual guilty party, played by David Macklin, delivers an "I did it" that's far more extensive and nuanced (in the characterization of how he tried to help while others did nothing) than the usual way the guilty party just blurts out "I did it" and buries their head.

In my view this was one of the very best episodes of the series if for no other reason than it departs, in a good way, from the established routine and rhythm that by the last couple seasons made the show too predictable.

The premise sounded interesting. 15 minutes in I'm wondering "should I keep watching this? " I checked out the reviews here and saw I was not alone. I kept watching to about the hour point. Still dull and plodding. One of the questions I asked myself was .. a transhuman that relies on a human brain with already formed neural pathways allowing it to "do things" would obviously be needed if you didn't want to teach the transhuman everything starting with how to crawl and then walk. So how in the world would you possibly pick as the source of the doner brain someone who has near ZERO neural pathways for walking??? Obviously it's a feel good thing, pick the guy in the wheelchair but scientifically it's the dumbest thing you can do.

So after the hour mark I resorted to fast forwarding... The whole ending is just so silly.. The nations of the world can come together to do "whatever is needed" to make the new earth work... yet they could not come together to make the old earth work by telling people to stop having so many kids? Again, just dumb. If a child has a tantrum and breaks his toy do you reward them with a new toy?

Another thing this movie does, and it's not alone, is it postulates people/aliens doing "things" that clearly would require nearly inconceivable amounts of energy to actually do, like shoot a beam with enough power to blow up a planet, or in this case transport/create the mass of a whole second earth. Yet somehow they do that without even the tiniest tiniest heating of adjacent "stuff" or any blinding emissions of electromagnetic energy. They literally move gabazillions and gabazillions to the 500th power of joules of energy with no outside effect of the movement of that energy.

The only reason I didn't give this a 1 is because the underlying premise was a decent starting point... to bad no one involved in this turkey knew how to develop it into a compelling movie.

Perhaps worse than Water for Chocolate. Elaine Benes pegged this dog in the Seinfeld epi.

Started out with a bit of promise.. plane crash, not sure of cause, who/what to blame. Then quickly degenerated into the standard silly overwrought melodrama so typical of these 60's movies. Not the slightest bit believable. I gave up about 2/3 rds thru. Not worth wasting any more time on such predictable drivel. The drunk, the straight shooter, the string of gals, the hard charging news reporter.. It's like they have a checklist for making big yet bad movies.

From the other reviews I expected something fresh, different, clever and insightful. What I got was something different but different but that's all. The movie posits a world organized to promote couples but populated by idiots. By age 40 you must be coupled and apparently it matters not if you had been coupled but no longer are, all that matters is whether you are coupled AT 40. From that follows the setup and setting of the movie, a hotel where you have a month to find your matched partner or else you suffer the penalty.

This absurd world is, for some unfathomable reason, tolerated by the inhabitants. Well, there is a reason of sorts I suppose, it's because these are no ordinary inhabitants, no, the inhabitants are a cross between the Stepford descendants and barely functional morons. We are to believe people meekly line up for their "stay" at the hotel, question almost nothing and if they do escape go on to be just as foolish and meek and stupid in their new environment.

The acting is wooden but that is on purpose and in keeping with what apparently was the vision for this movie, a world full of wooden idiots meekly and blindly accepting their fate. Oh how clever..

I might accept that premise if it was not taking place in the bigger setting of our current world with cars and well engineered highways, etc, etc. But it is just not believable that a world of people as meek and stupid and compliant and almost utterly lacking in self-awareness would have the smarts to create our current world yet be such moronic idiots by the age of 40. The movie Idiocracy seems far more realistic an alternative world than this waste of almost 2 hours.

I gave it a 3 instead of a 1 because it's somewhat more engrossing than Plan 9 From Outer Space.

The leads were awful, especially Dane. A one note wonder sometimes rising to the level of a sharp or more often a flat. The first half of the movie goes almost nowhere and if I rated it separately it would get a 2. The second half saved it from being recommended as don't waste your time. Still in all the dialog was stale and predictable 90% of the time. Overall the basic story and plot were OK and with decent casting of the leads it might have gone somewhere far more engaging. Instead it seemed like hollywood high got access to the sets and let the drama club remake a real movie with one of the kids industry insider Dads having his studio's special effects department help out the kiddies on weekends. The alternate possibility is that Disney was secretly behind this and used it as vehicle to get more life out of a couple of Mouseketeers that were aging out of the Mickey Mouse club.

A real snooze fest. I gave up 22 minutes in. The movie was going nowhere, literally... we were trapped in the "lab" building so to speak with endless scenes of vials with automatic squirting fillers doing something but who knows what, it was never explained. In fact, pretty much nothing was ever explained, it was all just mysterious "we can do this that and the other thing just by saying it". The brother, who presumably has been in a vegetative state for a while, looks like he just stepped off the cover of GQ and laid down in a hospital bed for a quick nap before going to his next model shoot. The Main girl scientist? programmer? savant? went around looking all pouty while her boyfriend was forced to party without her yet of course the boyfriend was not moving on. And in this world of presumably micro this and that since we are dealing with literally molecular level adjustments in the brain the girl can just intuit the "numbers" as if being "close enough" for brain surgery (by chemicals) is plenty good enough. There was not even a pretense of "science" presented, it's all just wave your hand and "make it so" movie science. Really, it's just boring boring boring. How anyone found this turkey compelling is beyond me.