The Invisible
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Movie Reviews of The Invisible
Movie Review: It wasn't a bad movie...until.
Summary: 3 Stars
They had the almost murder victim fall in love with the would be killer by seeing her dance with her hat off in a nightclub. I was willing to overlook the fact that I didn't really feel much for the main character and accept his justified anger at the people around him. I was even ignoring the main character's sudden dismay at being dead when not to long before he was thinking of committing suicide. And I was ignoring some of the stupid stuff that kept appearing throughout this movie. But they reached the limit of my suspension of belief with the possible love story twist. Nothing is explained properly in this flick and the only person the main character seems to show the most angry emotion with is his mother; not the people who tossed him in a pit to die.Movie Review: Don't let your kids watch this one!
Summary: 1 Stars
I can understand the points that this movie attempts to make, but this movie left so much up to the interpretation of the viewer that anything positive is just too easy to overlook. The moral of this story...it doesn't matter what you do as long as you do it for the "right" reasons.
This movie begins and ends with glorifying the completely destructive behavior of the majority of the teen characters. While the main character, Nick, does point out to Annie that her "rough past" doesn't justify what she did to him (I'll leave this unclear so as not to ruin it for you), the movie then wraps up with a series of even more destructive (not to mention unlawful) behaviors on Annie's part which turn out to be exactly the "cure-all" that's needed to make things right!
As a parent of four teens, I do not recommend this movie to parents of teens or preteens. The whole premise of the movie is "as long as you're doing it for the right reasons, go ahead and throw any trace of true morality to the winds."
Hm...what about just taking responsibility and facing the consequences for our choices????? That would have certainly solved Nick's little delimna (and really, saving your own life is such a little detail) in the first place.
Okay...off my soap box now.
Movie Review: Completely fails to deliver
Summary: 2 Stars
This movie looked good in trailers, but wholly failed to deliver. Totally.
The main character, Nick, is beaten mostly to death and the movie is (ostensibly) about his ghost (if that's the right word, since he's not really dead) running around town trying to get people to hear him and locate his body and try to revive him. Unfortunately, no one can hear him.
Except for Annie, a seriously troubled girl and, coincidentally, the one who put him in the ground in the first place.
No one in this movie is remotely sympathetic, and by half way through I just stopped caring whether anyone lived or died. Nick is one of those emo brooding "I'm so misunderstood because beneath my perfect exterior and apparent affluence I'm really very sad" guys. Annie's home life leaves much to be desired, and though she is written to care a lot about her younger brother Victor, she engages in all kinds of criminal activity exhibiting a reckless disregard for her own life and the law. And Pete, Nick's friend who is unwittingly pulled into the violence/near-murder, is a weak little loser, and I couldn't decide whether I wanted him or Annie to die more.
Nick's mother is also one-dimensional, though weak efforts were, in fact, made to try to give her some depth. (Those efforts failed miserably.) Likewise, Annie's erstwhile boyfriend lacks any value and I have no idea what was running though that idiotic mind of his. And Annie's two cronies also lack credibility: really, why don't they just tell Annie to piss off and do her own dirty work?
Anyway... yeah, the movie's not very good at all. Justin Chatwick's pretty and all, but it's not enough to sustain the film as a whole.
Movie Review: You Expect Better Than This From Disney !!
Summary: 2 Stars
Very disappointing - the whole idea of the movie was very good - it just did'nt gel together and you have to like at least one character - NONE were likeable , not even the guy dying who was the so called hero of the movie as well !! It says "from the producers of The Sixth Sense" - that was a great movie , this one was more like a cheap TV afternoon matinee . Movie Review: Life, Death, and Apparently Not Much In Between...
Summary: 3 Stars
Supernaturally themed movies are an often times tricky lot in Hollywood. The reasons being that these types of films rely on the audience's ability to suspend their disbelief and go along with the filmmaker(s) into the realm of the unknown. Sometimes these movies work out well, and provide audiences with a really entertaining piece of cinema and an enjoyable break from reality. But sometimes one of these films will be going along just fine, but a small plot hole or continuity error will derail the remainder of the film. If this occurs and the filmmaker doesn't rectify this problem later on in the film, an audience will more than likely become confused. This generally will result in the audience losing focus on the continuing storyline, and shifting over to how they can make sense of what has confused them, and at that point the film has collapsed. With all that being said, let's move on to the film at hand, "The Invisible" directed by David S. Goyer (director of "Blade: Trinity").
"The Invisible" is the story of a bright young man named Nick Powell (Justin Chatwin), who is a gifted writer, longing for something more. During the last week of high school Nick stands up for one of his friends who is having some trouble with a small group of thugs. After standing up to the group Nick finds himself in their crosshairs, and when one of the group is arrested for stealing, Nick becomes the prime suspect for being the one who tipped off the cops. To pay him back, this small gang attacks Nick in the woods, the attack goes too far and Nick is left for dead. However, the next day Nick simply wanders out of the woods seemingly uninjured, and heads to school to confront those who attacked him. There's just one problem, no one knows he's there. As Nick deals with this new dilemma, he slowly begins to understand that his body is still out in the woods somewhere, and what he once thought was his physical body he now knows is merely his soul trapped here in a state of limbo, while his body lies dying. But, if Nick's body isn't discovered before it's too late, his body will die and his soul will vanish to its final resting place.
Before I saw a single preview for this movie, I saw the movie poster at my local theater, and two things got my attention and piqued my interest. First was the slogan "From the producers of the Sixth Sense", a movie that was so original and fresh (not to mention a perfect example of a supernaturally themed movie done right), and secondly, was the director's name, David S. Goyer. For those of you that don't know, David S. Goyer is the writer of all three `Blade' films and "Batman Begins", and also was the director for the final `Blade' film, "Blade: Trinity". So, with those two aspects of the marketing already holding my attention I was ready to see this movie, then I finally saw the preview, and the film's appeal to me grew even more. For whatever reason though, I never made it to theaters to see this film, some of my friends and family saw it and thought it was good, so when it finally arrived on DVD I was really looking forward to watching it. However, after viewing the film, I have to say I was fairly disappointed. You may be reading this, and thinking to yourself that I had too high of expectations for this movie, after all it was only the second film Goyer had directed, and if that is your belief, that is fine, but I disagree.
Here's what went wrong, in my opinion, with "The Invisible". The movie was going along pretty well for a good majority of the movie, but about 20-30 minutes from the end, there occurs an unexplained change in one of the characters that became way too distracting to ignore. The character of Annie went from only being able to hear Nick when he would concentrate on her and yell, to where she could hear him at all times and even sense his presence around her. This tidbit of story information may seem spoilery to some, but Annie's ability to hear Nick was included in the previews and mentioned on the back of the DVD case so I have no problem divulging that information. To me, this aspect of the story was left underdeveloped and was too much of a jump for me to follow along with even with suspending my disbelief, I just felt that Goyer was asking way too much of the audience, and that this 'special' connection between the two characters should have been given more explanation. If that wasn't enough an event in the final moments of the film is even more confusing, but I don't want to get into any detail with it, so that I won't ruin it for anyone that hasn't seen the movie. These two plot points in the movie would have been fine had they been properly explained in the film, so that the audience (being me) wouldn't have to either figure it out for themselves or just go along with it (which I felt was asking too much suspension of my disbelief), had that happened the movie would have been much better, still not great, but better. Instead, the plot holes became way too distracting and brought the rest of the movie down with them.
The actors in this film were not highly known, I had seen most of them in at least one or two projects prior to this, regardless of that; most of the actors did a decent job with their respective characters. None of the actors really just seemed to take charge with their characters to make them their own so to speak, most just used the written lines without adding anything extra to the parts, and sometimes that works just as well, which was the case here and in most films where a teen is the lead actor. I did feel that Justin Chatwin, who played Nick Powell, was decent in his role, a few times his performance seemed wooden and unsure, but that was probably due to this being his first true starring role (his previous work includes a small supporting role on the TV series "Smallville" and a few movie appearances), so I can give him some slack. With more experience, and perhaps a better story, I think that Justin could become a much better, more polished actor. The majority of the supporting roles were all decently cast, it seemed like Marcia Gay Harden was only cast as Nick's mom to lend some credibility and more weight to the film, due to her longer, fairly successful career. Personally, I felt she didn't seem to give too much effort for her role, almost as if she was just going through the motions and just collecting a paycheck, her performance felt the most one-dimensional of any of the actors.
Finally, we come to director David S. Goyer, still a relative newcomer to the directing chair, and an extremely talented screenwriter. The direction for this movie was very good, fairly straightforward and nothing flashy, which suited this movie's story and overall feel. I'm sure that Goyer had a much easier time directing "The Invisible" over his previous effort "Blade: Trinity", since this movie was a standalone and the other was the third installment in a highly successful franchise. So, the pressure had to have been significantly less on this film, there was no doubt other pressures that came along, since this was a stand alone film not tied into any franchise, he had to make this film work for itself, a task he accomplished fairly well. My one complaint about having Goyer direct this movie, is that he didn't work on the script, he merely used someone else's script to shoot from (a decision possibly decided by the studio or Goyer's schedule, who knows?). The fact that Goyer is such a talented screenwriter; I would have thought he would have been able to spot the problems in the story that I mentioned above, and been able to correct them. Maybe he did and wasn't allowed, I don't know, but this possible oversight on his part definitely surprised me.
Overall, "The Invisible" isn't a horrible movie; it's actually pretty good for a majority of the film, but a few plot holes causes the whole experience to fall apart in a hurry. Had more time been put into the story, and a little more work from some of the actors, then this could have been a very entertaining movie experience; instead we're left with just an average movie with so much unused potential.
"The Invisible" is rated PG-13 for violence and language.