Are YOU Cloning Me? Are YOU CLONING Me?!
I decided to do a mini-theme for the first two weeks of July, since the new Robert De Niro horror flick "Hide & Seek" comes out next week, I thought I'd review his first quasi-horror flick "Godsend", before tackling "Hide & Seek".
Going into this movie I had an expectation on what it was about. Then during the movie, I wished it was about something else. So to ease your curiosity, I'll let ya know what I thought it was about and what I wished it was about. Then we'll get into why this movie is really crappy.
What I Thought It Was About
A kid dies. The parents freak out and go to Robert De Niro saying "Make us another kid". He says "But I got a casino to run!" but manages to find time to make a clone of the kid. Years later, the ghost of the first kid haunts the second kid. Hilarity ensues. Rebecca Romijn gets naked. The end.
What I Wished It Was About
The entire movie is from the kid's view and he thinks something is up. He finds out that he's really a clone of a kid from 8 years ago. Weird shit happens, then hilarity ensues. Rebecca Romijn gets naked. The end.
Now doesn't those sound like much better movies? Too bad they can't be made now, cause everyone will say "That sounds like 'Godsend'", in which I'll just say "Shut up" and kick them in the knees.
Now, onto what this movie is really about.
Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn (Minus the Stamos) are Paul and Jessica "Jessie" Duncan. Yet again: Hot chick's are always named Jessica. Anyway, they're having a birthday party for their son Adam, who is played by a creepy little kid, who played the psycho creepy kid in "The Butterfly Effect". The next day, while shopping for sneakers, Adam gets killed in a scene lifted from "Final Destination". We sort of knew this was going to happen, but the movie took it's sweet ass time in having it happen.
About 30 seconds after the kid died, Rober De Niro's character, Dr. Richard Wells, comes up to Paul and Jessie and say "We can rebuild him! We can make him faster, stronger, better!" After spending the next 30 minutes of the movie, which played like a "Lifetime" movie, thinking about it, they finally say "Ohh...alright."
So eight years and nine months later Adam Two is 8 years old again and the clone shit hits the fan. Adam gets these weird visions and he has fucked up dreams about kids screaming and places being on fire and all kind of other odd stuff.
So Paul and Jessie freak out and keep bugging Dr. Robert De Niro about it, and this goes on for another 45 minutes. This makes us think that this is just the First Adam saying "Hey shithead! You're living my life!!" and this movie is gonna be about souls or some shit. But...no.
Things stop making sense when Adam says this kid that looks like him in his dreams is named Zachary Clark and that he went to a school called St. Pius. This is confusing for everyone cause Adam isn't named Zachary and he never went to such school.
And this movie is terrible at subplots. There's a bully at the school who picks on all the kids. He just ends up drowing in the river. It appears Dr. De Niro is romantically interested in Jessie (Who wouldn't) but nothing ever pans out with that. Adam keeps ending up at this abandoned shed in the woods. There really isn't a reason, plot wise, for him to keep going there.
After awhile of this Zachary stuff, Paul decides to do some investigating and he finds out there was some kid named Zachary Clark awhile back and he went nuts, burned down his school, killed his mom, and then burned the house down, which resulted in him dying. A creepy maid tells Paul all this.
Adam Two finds old pictures of Adam One, freaks out, and fully becomes this Zachary kid. It never crossed anyone's mind that he was probably just bipolar or had split personalities or something. Well anyway, Adam Two is about to kill Jessie when Paul confronts Dr. Robert, because we learned that...
Ugh...this is so stupid...
Zachary Clark was the doctor's son, and he wanted to make a new son that wasn't so nutzoid, so he saw an opportunity with Paul and Jessie. But that whole thing fell down the shitter.
Now wait a minute. His name is Dr. Richard Wells. The kid's name is Zachary Clark. When Richard came up to Jessie and she recognized him as her old teacher in collage, so he must've been Dr. Wells back then. So why in the hell is his kid's last name Clark? See, this doesn't make any sense and this is just stupid. I hate this movie.
Well Paul and Bob fight, which results in a church burning down. Paul manages to get home before Adam Two kills Mommy. And...things just fade away...
In what is possibly the most horrible ending ever to a movie, the family just move to a way nicer house and Dr. De Niro fakes his death, shaves his beard, and starts all over again. And Adam is seeing a psychiatrist. Then we get a stupid non-fake ending when a pair of ghost hands pull Adam Two into the closet. But that didn't really happen. Or it did. I dunno. I give up.
Whoever wrote this didn't know how to write a movie or at least didn't know how to end it. They could've at least had Adam Two square off agains the ghost/dead decaying body of Adam One. That would've been cool. So don't see this movie, it's a waste of time, it's a waste of money, and it's a waste of Robert De Niro's acting talents.
1 star.
"Godsend" on IMDb.com:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335121/