marcusharwell.net

It sucked. Giant holes throughout. I like Sandra Bullock, she’s charming, and I’ll give her a shot in most anything, even if it looks like it’ll be awful (I’m looking at you, Miss Congeniality), but she sleepwalked (what is the past tense of “sleepwalk”?) through this dog.

I think I’ll spoil it for you. Bullock discovers she’s living a week out of order. Her relationship is tepid and distant. She wakes up on Thursday to find her husband, played by Julian McMahon, has been killed the day before. She goes through the day and wakes up to find it’s Monday. Then it’s Saturday, then Tuesday, Friday, Sunday, then Wednesday, the day her husband dies. Bullock tries to find a way to stop McMahon’s death, but ultimately ends up causing it. In context, this makes no sense, whatsoever.

Either you can change the future with foreknowledge of it, or it’s predestined. It’s as much a paradox to have it both ways as to have neither. Bullock apparently wasn’t involved in the accident at the beginning of these leaps through her week, or the policeman wouldn’t be showing up at her door to tell her about the accident. At the end, she has McMahon pull over to the side of the road, then make a u-turn rather than just getting out or backing the car up to where she is. He stalls, a truck comes, he dies, boom, Sandra weeps. Is this the futility of trying to change the future? Leaving aside whether she changes her relationship for the better before McMahon leaves on Wednesday morning, if all this angst is futile, why are we watching this film? Guys, it’s not a twist ending if we know the outcome and nothing can prevent it.

If you’re just having terrible things happen to the main characters, I need them to be likable. Otherwise, as in this case, I just think about all the things a normal person would do in Bullock’s situation, and think, “what a bunch of idiots,” as the credits roll. A normal person who knows her husband is about to be killed and has him on the phone precious seconds before he reaches the scene shouts, “please, please, you need to pull over, NOW! I’m right behind you, you’re in danger, I’ll explain when I get there! Are you pulling over, damn it?” No, Bullock’s depressed ditz spends the whole time exchanging niceties with McMahon as they barrel down the highway.

The director should have had Bullock run McMahon down at the end. That would have been a twist I’d have applauded.