Marcheline's Movie Review: Sometimes It's Better NOT to Know!

Or, sometimes, it's better to admit you don't KNOW and you never really wanted to KNOW, because after watching this movie all you will truly KNOW is that you just wasted two hours of precious time. I mean, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!! And you're wasting two hours watching this? Come on.

There is so much wrong with this movie (which was suggested to me by someone whom I will never quite look at the same way again) that I hardly KNOW where to start.

* Single dad loves his kid, yet spends his nights putting away fifths of Scotch but somehow not getting drunk or being too hungover to drive his kid to school at seven the next morning. Riiiiiiiiiiiight.

* Single dad, after drinking overflowing multiple glasses of Scotch, begins decisively interpreting seemingly meaningless numbers covering a piece of paper. Not only does he arrive at the conclusive answer four seconds after doodling a few of the numbers on a write on/wipe off board, he then proceeds to transfer all three hundred numbers BY HAND onto the board without A) making any drunken whoopsie mistakes or B) Just typing them into the computer that's sitting on his desk instead. Um, okay. What?

* After determining that the numbers indicate the time and exact location of disasters in which lots of people will die, single dad spends the rest of the movie MAKING SURE HE ARRIVES AT THOSE LOCATIONS AT THE EXACT TIME THE EVENTS ARE SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN. I am starting to feel more than insulted by this time, I don't know about you folks.

* After figuring out the exact date and time of the end of the world, single dad does NOT bang the pretty single mom who he's adopted as his "help me figure all this out" partner, or, alternatively, his "listen to me rant like a lunatic" partner. Talk about missed opportunities and last chances.

* When logic is stretched so thin as to be non-existent, moviemakers cram random chaos into the scene in the hopes that you won't realize that Nicolas Cage just screamed, "We have to go where the numbers want us to go!". For example, during an accident scene where the only victim is dead and already loaded into the meat cart, people are running around screaming and police start shooting guns into the air.

* The second worst part about this movie (saving the worst for last) is that it purports to be centered around a moral truth. What it ACTUALLY is, however, is a string of highly violent, grotesque doomsday images lightly crocheted together by a string of sappy sentimental hogwash. The people that will love this movie are the ones that jam on the brakes to peer at accidents on the roadway. I'm just saying, is it really necessary to see wildlife ON FIRE trying to escape a horrific forest fire? Is it really necessary to see screaming people WHO ARE ON FIRE trying to escape a monstrous plane crash, out of which no one would ever be walking because they'd be piles of charred ground beef? I think not.

* The worst thing of all is that we are supposed to take away some sort of religious spiritual revelation (pun intended), loosely based on the Christian viewpoint of Adam and Eve - there's the huge Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil right there in the last scene. I was sold an action movie and ended up with an attempted brainwashing.

FAIL.