Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2008)

Tags

Action, Alan Bagh, Birdemic, Comedy, Horror, Movie, Romance, Whitney Moore

Since it is hard to classify this as an actual movie (see the trailer), I’m not going to use my normal review format.  I’m just…going to type for a while.  That seemed to be the plan of the director of this “movie”, to just…film for a while…and hope that his actors eventually spoke lines resembling what, I assume, was written and that the special effects added later would fill in some of the other gaps.

Unfortunately, the not-so-special effects are major gaps themselves.

I love a guy with a small carbon footprint...

This is one of those times where you’re just not sure if the makers of the movie were trying to make a serious movie or if they were just having fun making something that they knew was terrible.  It’s hard to imagine anyone could make something this bad without it being on purpose.

That being said…I fear that this was an honest attempt at a movie.  I hope I’m wrong, but there is evidence to support my theory.

First of all, it’s not trying to be a comedy.  Most movies that know how cheesy and low budget they are tend to throw in a lot of attempted jokes.  Unless their plan was one long ironic joke, then there are no real attempts at humor here other than our hero’s sex-obsessed friend’s occasional inappropriate remark.  Also, the whole movie seems to be one long cautionary tale about being environmentally conscious and living in peace with others.  Yes, one character does utter the line, “why can’t we all just give peace a chance, ya know?”  Plus, the website imaginepeace.com is prominently displayed in several scenes.  It’s no wonder they were able to use an instrumental version of the song Imagine in the movie.  Yoko Ono seems to be the creator of, or at least heavily involved in, Imagine Peace.

My guess is that Imagine Peace wanted to make a little horror movie to act as a conveyance for their heavy handed environmental message, so they hired a novice director and some inexperienced “actors” (aka automatons that will robotically read whatever lines are fed them) and threw this junk together one week.

Make no mistake, though, it is hilarious junk.  Whether it was meant to be or not, it’s as fun to watch as The Room or Troll 2.  In fact, Troll 2 looks competently directed and edited compared to this movie.  Sound levels change wildly when switching from one angle in a scene to another, some scenes have no sound at all, and often actors deliver lines and then just look around like, “is the scene over?”

coathangers are useless against imaginary eagles...

And then there’s the birds.  The eagles are fighting back against all of our pollution and our starting of forest fires and our corvettes and candy-eating, and etc etc.  Their main tactic in doing so is dispatching hundreds of really horrible computer animated versions of themselves to swoop in and slice people’s throats.  Or, alternatively they will dive bomb buildings around the city (with airplane sound effects included) and cause huge explosions that can be seen a mile away.  Of course, other times their dive-bombing results in merely a cracked window on a car, so I guess it just depends on how much speed they can achieve before impact…or how much fuel they have in their tank?  Who knows.

I do know that the birds only show up about 35-40 minutes into the movie.  The first portion is spent establishing the complete lack of personality featured in all of our stars.  There’s Rod, a hot shot salesman at a…company of some sort, and then there’s Natalie, a model who has just landed a big gig with Victoria’s Secret.  I will say this for the movie – Natalie is definitely believable as a lingerie model.  She is quite the attractive one.  And she’s possibly the best actor in the movie as well, though it’s hard to tell when everybody is reading such horrible lines.  This interview with the actress, Whitney Moore, actually sheds some light on how this movie came to exist.  It’s funny, go read it.

pew pew pew!

I could go on and on about this movie.  It seems like it would be fun to just break it down scene by scene.  For instance, I just loved the scene where our heroes are fending of a bird attack on the side of the highway with various firearms, including an automatic assault rifle, while a bunch of other cars are just streaming by in the background, business as usual.  I wonder how many near accidents were caused by people slowing down to see why people were running around with machine guns on the side of the road, firing up in the air at imaginary birds.  Though, I guess people might be used to that in California.

To sum up, if you like horribly, comically bad movies, you will not be disappointed by Birdemic.  You will roll your eyes at all of the preachy environmental talk, but it’s worth it just to see those eagles do their thing.  And be sure to watch all the way til the poignant final scene where the eagles mysteriously fly back from whence they came…the ocean.  The ocean?  I guess eagles live out on Eagle Island in the Pacific Ocean.  See?  Learn something new every day.

the end...?

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Jaws 3 (1983)

Tags

Bess Armstrong, Dennis Quaid, Drama, Horror, Jaws 3, John Putch, Lea Thompson, Louis Gossett Jr., Movie, Simon MacCorkindale

what a shark might look like.

PG

Dennis Quaid, Bess Armstrong, Louis Gossett Jr., Simon MacCorkindale, Lea Thompson, John Putch

Mike: I’ll have my beeper beep your beeper.
Kathryn: I’ll have my beeper beep your beeper back.

A great white shark is captured inside the Sea World marine park which prompts its much larger mother to come looking for it…and she’s hungry.

I used to watch this movie all the time when I was a kid, but even then I knew it wasn’t very good.  The not-so-special effects were bad even for 1983, and the relatively low amount of on-screen kills was disappointing.  Since that’s what I was watching a Jaws movie for back then, the long scenes involving the Brody brothers and their romantic interests didn’t interest me much either.  Well, except for the fact that Lea Thompson was totally hot.

In my advancing age, though, and after having watched it at midnight on the 4th of July (or the 5th technically), I have come to realize that the best part about this movie is the characters.  They’re actually somewhat interesting and believable, and if they were surrounded by something that was even remotely exciting or well done, this would be a pretty darned good movie.

But they’re not.  They’re surrounded by some horrible effects, poorly staged action sequences, and some totally unnecessary 3-D scenes.  Of course, I never saw this in 3-D.  I’ve only seen the muddied images of the version that was on VHS and TV.  It looks absolutely terrible.  I suppose it’s remnants of the 3-D technology that have rendered the entire movie slightly blurry ever since.

Let’s see, what else is bad about this movie.  Oh, the dolphins!  Cindy and Sandy, I believe…?  Normally I like dolphins, but these two got on my nerves.  Or at least the constant references to them did.  Plus, they get to be part of one of the worst final freeze frames in movie history.

Dolphins won the Superbowl!!

Most of the action in this one takes place off screen, and instead they go for a few gross out moments with crabs and other slimy things crawling all over a dead body fished out of the ocean.  And speaking of the ocean, am I all geographically screwed up, or is it the movie that is mistaken?  I don’t seem to recall Orlando being on the coast of Florida at any point in my life, so how come Sea World opens right up to the ocean in this movie?  I’ve always been confused by that.

Obviously the Jaws series should have stopped after the first one.  Part 2 was tolerable (aside from that one girl who does nothing but scream for the final 3rd of the movie), but uncalled for.  Parts 3 and 4 are, as Gene Siskel said, trash.

Though, I have to admit, part 4 makes part 3 look like an all time classic…

Apparently sharks can propel themselves forward at a very high rate of speed without even moving their tail…

10 – 2 for terrible special effects – 2 for very little shark action on screen – 1 for just looking terrible – 1 for…I dunno, just sucking in general = 4.0

HALF-Hearted Review: The Extra Man (2010)

Tags

Comedy, Drama, Katie Holmes, Kevin Kline, Movie, Paul Dano, The Extra Man

Walking out of a bad movie…we’ve all wanted to do it, and some of us probably have done it on occasion.  I myself abandoned the movie “O” with about 10-15 minutes to go, though I should have left earlier.  Usually, though, if I’ve paid for a movie, I see it through til the end.

But then The Extra Man came along.  I didn’t see it in the theater, but I did pay to watch it On-Demand.  Before I delve into my experience, please watch this Siskel & Ebert review for the 1989 movie She’s Out of Control, but feel free to skip forward to about the 2:15 mark to get to the part I want you to hear.

Now…I’m not here to say that The Extra Man isn’t better than She’s Out of Control.  I mean, it HAS to be…right?  But what I am here to say is that at the halfway point of this movie, I realized I had absolutely no desire to continue watching even another frame of it.  The only reason I was trying to muscle through it was because I had paid for it, but eventually even that wasn’t reason enough to continue.  So, I turned it off and did something else.  Thus, I’m not writing a regular review of it because that probably wouldn’t be fair to the movie.  Who knows, maybe it suddenly got really good in the second half.  Maybe it all started to make sense and stumbled upon some funny dialogue.  Maybe…but I don’t plan on finding out.

So why was it so intolerable?

Well, I’m not sure I can easily point out specific reasons…but I’ll try.

may I help you out of the movie, ma'am?

The plot is as follows:  Louis (Paul Dano) is a young teacher at Princeton who is let go after he’s caught trying on another teacher’s bra.  Yes, Louis likes to dress up in womens clothing.  After this setback, Louis moves to Manhattan and rents a room from an eccentric professor/writer, Henry (Kevin Kline), and gets a job at a magazine…or something.  There he meets the annoying Mary (Katie Holmes) and develops a crush on her.  Meanwhile, Louis discovers that the monetarily challenged Henry works evenings as an “extra man”.  That is, he attends dinners and parties with elderly widows who need another man around to fill a spot at a table, etc, or to just feel less lonely.  For some reason, Louis wants to do this too.

And that’s all I know because that’s as far as I got.  And I may have even messed up some of that plot description.  It wasn’t easy to follow as my interest waned.

This was the very definition of a movie spinning its wheels and going nowhere.  I honestly thought it had to be almost over before I checked how far into I was and saw that it was only half way through.  There was just scene after scene that went absolutely nowhere.  I didn’t care about, or understand, any of the characters.  The cinematography wasn’t very interesting.  The dialogue wasn’t witty or believable.  There was no reason to keep watching.

As for the performances…well, I already mentioned that Katie Holmes was just annoying.  Paul Dano…well…Paul, admittedly I haven’t seen all of your movies, but judging by the ones I have seen…you might want to think about branching out and trying something new.  You’re starting to make Michael Cera look like Johnny Depp.  At least try a new haircut.

phonin' it in...

When I described Kevin Kline’s character as eccentric, I meant it.  Aside from his peculiar night job, he’s got a few odd views on life and society that he’s not afraid to share…oh, and he likes to dance around and sing in his pajamas.  Plus, often Kline seems like he’s acting in a play while everybody else is in a movie.  Just one more thing that wore on my nerves.

Normally I don’t condone abandoning a movie half way through, especially if you’re planning to write a review of it later.  If I was still doing my movie-a-day thing, I would have powered through this one, but in this case, it just wasn’t worth continuing.  As Siskel & Ebert said above, isn’t life too precious to waste watching something you have absolutely no desire to watch?

I decided that it was.

I’d be interested to hear other opinions on this movie, if anybody’s actually watched it…and finished it.  Not that I’d be persuaded to go back, rent it again, and finish it, but it would be nice to know that there’s at least something redeeming in the movie.

For now I’ll just assume that I turned it off right before the zombies showed up and ate everybody…

The Art of Travel (2008)

Tags

Angelika Libera, Brooke Burns, Christopher Masterson, Comedy, Drama, Johnny Messner, Movie, Romance, The Art of Travel

wow...almost looks real, don't it?

R

Christopher Masterson, Johnny Messner, Brooke Burns, Angelika Libera

Taylor: It’s so sad when you’re too tired to laugh.

After discovering that his fiancee cheated on him, Conner (Masterson) leaves her at the altar and heads off to Nicaragua.  There he meets two American adventurers and embarks with them on an attempt to hike across a barely passable stretch of jungle.

Well this was a pretty useless movie.  Pretentious too.  It makes the lead character, Conner, seem simultaneously innocent and wise beyond his years.  He eventually affects everybody he meets in some sort of positive way.  It kind of reminded me of the way Chris McCandless was portrayed in the movie Into the Wild.  Chris was a more likable guy though.

It all feels like one totally synthetic look into the jungles and local cultures of Central America.  It barely scratches the surfaces of the realities of that area, and instead just goes about romanticizing the importance of traveling around the world as much as possible, even at the expense of important relationships.

Didn’t like the main character, didn’t think the adventure they were on was realistic or all that adventurous really, didn’t understand how they had a year’s supply of beer and gasoline on one jeep, and didn’t enjoy the general theme of the movie.  There’s some nice scenery to look at, but I’m sure it looks much nicer in person than in this movie.  So go see it in person.

Why be with a beautiful woman that you’re in love with when you could be traveling around to random places all by yourself?

10 – 2 for an annoying lead character – 4 for everything seeming very inauthentic and romanticized = 4.0

The Fourth Kind (2009)

Tags

Corey Johnson, Drama, Elias Koteas, Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Horror, Milla Jovovich, Movie, The Fourth Kind, Will Patton

sorry folks, I'm about the closest thing to an alien you're gonna see in this movie...

PG-13

Milla Jovovich, Will Patton, Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Elias Koteas, Corey Johnson

Abel: Counseling a fellow psychologist is like…talking to myself.

A psychologist, Abbey Tyler (Jovovich), starts to suspect that the sleep problems several of her patients are experiencing might be linked to something mysterious.  As she investigates, she slowly realizes that the same phenomenon might be happening to her too.

“Just when you thought it was safe to go back to bed!”  That would have been my tag line for this cleverly disguised Jaws clone.  “What does this have to do with Jaws”, you may ask?  “Not much”, I would answer, “but it makes it more fun to write the review, so let’s roll with it.”

First you have Abbey, filling the role of Martin Brody from Jaws.  Brody was sure there was a killer shark dining on the beach goers on Amity Island, just like Abbey is sure something very strange is going on with her patients.  Enter the angry Sheriff August (Patton).  His equivalent role in Jaws is that of Mayor Vaughn (“Come 4th of July, these beaches will be open!”).  Sheriff August thinks Abbey is playing mind games with people and wants her to just stop it stop stop it STOP IT STOP IT!!  Yeah, he’s an angry man.

Next, there’s the Matt Hooper equivalent, Awolowa Odusami (Kae-Kazim), an expert on ancient cultures who believes that extraterrestrials have been visiting earth since ancient times.  He believes in Abbey and helps translate some audio of a strange voice speaking in Sumerian (“Who ya gonna call!?”).  Lastly there’s Abel (Koteas), who can less directly be compared to Captain Quint in Jaws.  He’s an older colleague of Abbey’s who she brings in to help out.  He’s doubtful that anything extraordinary is really happening.  That is, until he starts to experience it up close.

Now, here’s the thing about Jaws.  Mr. Spielberg, courtesy of a malfunctioning robotic shark, stumbled onto a stroke of genius by not showing said shark very much in the early going of the movie.  Just a fin here, a tooth there, until he’d built as much tension in the viewer as in the ropes on John Goodman’s favorite hammock.  Then, there’s that big moment where the shark first rises up out of the water, resulting in the audience bolting up out of their seats, running for the exits, and moving to Nebraska (seriously, the population of Nebraska doubled in 1975, look it up*).  The point being, he did actually show the shark at some point.  Well, in The Fourth Kind, we get that tension building first hour of the movie, where we see hints of alien activity, but then…nothing…no pay off.  Sorry to be Mr. Spoiler, but we don’t see any aliens in this movie, people.  They are merely implied via weird voices on tape and some shadows in the dark.

Of course, the gimmick in this movie is that along with the regular movie, there’s supposedly actual footage from the *real* Dr. Abbey Tyler’s sessions with various residents of Nome, Alaska.  Plus, we have a supposedly real interview with her spliced in there too.  I use the word “supposedly” because clearly none of it is real.  I’m not sure they’re even trying to fool us into thinking it’s real.  So basically at times we’re watching the same scene played out by two different actors on screen at the same time.  As a regular movie on one side of the screen and low quality video footage on the other side.  Why do this?  Well, because sometimes (i.e. anytime something interesting happens) the supposedly real video footage experiences interference and becomes unwatchable.  Convenient.

This is a total miscalculation of a movie.  The director, Olatunde Osunsanmi, probably should have just gone with either a straightforward movie or a faux documentary.  Combining the two was distracting and removed any scariness that could have been built up.  Plus, maybe some sort of pay off would have been nice, you know, to thank the audience for sticking around the whole time.

Really, this just seems like a glorified Sci-Fi Channel special about alien abduction.  Actually, just take “glorified” out of that last sentence.  I suppose the actors do a good job (especially the ones on the supposedly real footage) and the movie mostly looks good, but so what?  In the end I was just left saying, “that’s it!?  …Where’s the shark!?”

*may not be an actual statistic

Don’t live in Nome, Alaska.

10 – 4 for meandering all over the place and being mostly pointless – 1.5 for building mild tension and having no interesting pay off = 4.5

Highwaymen (2004)

Tags

Action, Colm Feore, Drama, Frankie Faison, Highwaymen, Jim Caviezel, Movie, Rhona Mitra

ma'am, would you like us to escort you out of this movie?

R

Jim Caviezel, Rhona Mitra, Frankie Faison, Colm Feore

Rennie: We have a lot in common, you and me.
Molly: People in our lives get run over.
Rennie: Perfect fit.

A sadistic killer is stalking the highways in his Cadillac Eldorado, running people down ruthlessly.  James “Rennie” Cray (Caviezel) is the only one trying to stop him and the only one who can save Molly (Mitra), a woman who is being stalked by the highway killer after surviving an earlier attack.

Glad this one was free on-demand…

Though, I will say, it was good for a laugh or two.  Despite the ridiculousness of the quote above, this is not a comedy.  In fact, everything, including that exchange, is played with the utmost seriousness.  Which makes it even funnier.  Want some more bad dialogue?  How about this confusing exchange:

Molly: Did you mean to hit him?
Rennie: I didn’t know much about driving back then.  You know it’s basic obstacle avoidance.  You’re not supposed to look at the thing you’re trying to avoid, or you’ll drive right into it.  All I know is, I was lookin’ at him.

That’s Rennie talking about ramming the killer’s car with his own car after witnessing the guy run over his wife.  Now, first of all, he had to already be in his 30s when that happened, so why he said he didn’t know much about driving, I don’t know.  Plus, going by the flashback to the incident we see, I’m pretty sure he meant to crash into the guy!

After that ugly incident, the killer was brought back from near death, but had to have several limbs replaced, which left him looking like some sort of early model Terminator.  Except, much less scary.  I think the movie would have been better served to never even show the guy in the car, sort of like Spielberg’s early movie, Duel.

This is a stupid movie.  There’s nothing original about it, the dialogue is terrible (though, amusingly so), and the performances from Caviezel and Mitra are so bland that I would have trouble even paying them if I was the makers of this movie.  The only one who brings anything interesting to his performance is Faison, as a traffic accident investigator.  He at least tries to inject some energy into this otherwise stale production.  The car chases are dull, except for maybe the one where the killer drags another car behind his on its roof, but it’s not staged very well, so it still doesn’t really work.  Plus, where are all the other people in the world??  Every chase seems to happen on a road with absolutely no other cars, even in the middle of town.

If you want a few laughs and need a movie to give the MST3K treatment to, by all means, check this one out.  If you’re looking for a quality action/thriller, skip it.

Look both ways…

10 – 3.5 for bad acting and bad dialogue – 2 for being totally unoriginal and bland – .6 for some poorly staged action sequences + .1 for the unintentional laughs = 4.0

Year One (2009)

Tags

Comedy, David Cross, Jack Black, June Diane Raphael, Juno Temple, Michael Cera, Movie, Year One

the day the laughter died...

R (I watched the Unrated version, which I think probably warrants the R)

Jack Black, Michael Cera, David Cross, Juno Temple, June Diane Raphael

Zed: So maybe I’m not the best hunter.
Maya: Or gatherer.
Zed: Yes, or gatherer.
Maya: Zed, those are the only two jobs we have here.

It’s…a long time ago…and after Zed (Black) eats from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, he is banished from his village.  Oh (Cera) tags along, and the two get into various adventures after they stumble upon their fellow villagers who are now enslaved.

Dear Year One Movie,

Screw you.  You are stupid and I never want to see you again.  I know you think you’re funny and interesting, but you’re not.  The whole time I was watching you, I wanted to lean into the TV, do my best Jeff Goldblum imitation, and say, “now eventually you are going to have jokes in your comedy movie, right?  Hello??”

I wish I’d never seen you and I hope I can forget all about you real soon.

You suck,

TRWLPT

Harold Ramis has fallen a long way since Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day.

10 – 7 because it sucked = 3.0

Goliath (2008)

Tags

Caroline O'Connor, Comedy, David Zellner, Drama, Goliath, Movie, Nathan Zellner

if we sit here long enough doing absolutely nothing, do you think the audience will just get up and leave...?

R

Nathan Zellner, David Zellner, Caroline O’Connor

Chad: I guess I should tell you up front that…I have a, uh…I have a coupon from the phone book.
Oliver: This is an ad, not a coupon…
Chad: …really?

As Chad (Nathan Zellner) is going through a divorce, his 13 year old cat runs away, giving Chad even more of a reason to have a mental breakdown.

Yeah, that’s pretty much the entirety of the plot.  We’re basically just watching a guy hit rock bottom for an hour and a half.  It’s not interesting, it’s not funny, and it’s not filmed particularly well.

I really didn’t like this movie at all, in case you couldn’t tell.

There’s a scene that must be at least 5 minutes long which consists of nothing but Chad and his wife signing divorce papers in silence.  I think it’s supposed to be funny, but instead it is agonizing.

I do love the independent film world, but just because it’s a little independent movie doesn’t mean it’s okay to have nothing happen for long stretches of time.  I didn’t care about any of the characters (except maybe the cat) or anything that happened to them.

It kind of made me think of the movie Wendy and Lucy in its simplicity (and because it involved somebody looking for an animal), but W&L worked for some reason.  Maybe Michelle Williams is just that much better an actress and that much more likable.  Whatever the reason, that’s a good movie and this one isn’t.

Private investigators probably won’t hunt down your missing cat for you.

10 – 5 for being so pointless and slow and boring and unfunny – 1 for some sub-par acting – 1 for not being at all visually appealing either = 3.0

Whiteout (2009)

Tags

Action, Columbus Short, Drama, Gabriel Macht, Kate Beckinsale, Movie, Suspense, Tom Skerritt, Whiteout

my flashlight's bigger than your flashlight...

R

Kate Beckinsale, Tom Skerritt, Gabriel Macht, Columbus Short

Jack: I have plans tonight.
Carrie: Microwave popcorn and a six pack is not plans.

Carrie Stetko (Beckinsale) is a U.S. Marshal stationed in Antarctica.  Her usually boring gig there is one day interrupted by the discovery of a murdered scientist.  Her investigation into the murder leads her into a continually more dangerous situation.

Wow, this movie has everything!  Uninspired directing, dull characters, adequate acting, a simple yet confusing plot, a shower scene at the beginning that redefines gratuitous, and one big incomprehensible fight scene in the snow.

Seriously, I’m not going to spend much time talking about this movie.  It’s not even in so-bad-it’s-good territory, it’s just boring and pointless.  The MacGuffin in the movie is a case of metal canisters taken from a Russian plane that crashed in Antarctica 50 years ago.  People want them…people will kill for them…and Carrie Stetko has to find out why!

If you do get stuck watching this, don’t bother trying to figure out who’s who and why they want those canisters.  It doesn’t matter.  None of it does.  The payoff isn’t interesting or surprising, and you’ll just feel annoyed that you committed any brain power to trying to follow the plot.

Don’t climb down into deep, icy holes in Antarctica.

10 – 2 for a dull, confusing plot – 1 for most of the action scenes being barely visible – 2 for bland characters and blander dialogue – .5 for poor use of flashbacks = 4.5

Nobel Son (2008)

Tags

Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman, Bryan Greenberg, Drama, Eliza Dushku, Mary Steenburgen, Nobel Son, Shawn Hatosy

is this movie overlong or is my watch just not working…?

R

Bryan Greenberg, Alan Rickman, Mary Steenburgen, Shawn Hatosy, Bill Pullman, Eliza Dushku, Danny DeVito

Sarah: I’m so sorry.  You see, the genius part of his brain is so big that it’s just swallowed up the civilized part of his brain, causing this monstrous antisocial behavior.

The son of an arrogant, Nobel Prize winning professor is kidnapped.

I guess that sentence above isn’t so much a plot summary as it is just the setup of the movie.  I’m  just afraid that if I tried getting any further into the plot, I’d be typing all day.  Plus, I’d probably give some so-called surprises away.

Though, I’m not sure anyone would really care since the movie is predictable, dull, and obnoxious.  It is WAY over edited and is buried under a lot of extremely loud music.  None of the characters are likable, the central caper is stupid, and characters behave nonsensically just for the sake of advancing the plot.  Also, a lot of little plot points are brought up but never actually get explained or followed through with.  That bugged me.

Yeah, it’s not very good.  It’s just a stylistic imitation of movies like The Italian Job and The Bank Job.  Maybe if it had been named The Nobel Son Job it would have worked better.  I was ready for it to be over the whole time I was watching it, and now I’m ready for this review to be over.  So…it is.

Beware hot crazy chicks who write bad poetry.

10 – 3.3 for being predictable, dull, and implausible – 2 for a bunch of annoying characters = 4.7