Rating: 1 stars out of 5
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, Christian Convery
Where to watch: Theatres
To watch or not to watch: No. Just… No!
It is 1982, and Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) are living a regular sub-urban life with their two teenage kids Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery). It opens with a block summer party, where we learn that Denise wants more from her life with her husband and kids and dreams of leaving them and going away with her yellow suitcase. And we know this because she has written a draft for a book which she has shared with a neighbour for feedback. So life goes, she keeps writing, Greg has been laid off and is delivering pizzas, which is totally not liked by Denise because she wants more. One day she gets more – the entire neighbourhood of Oak Street has been transported to the Jurassic Era and there are dinosaurs around. Denise gets a moment of eiphany and realises this, along with the knowledge of a split in time dimension or wormhole or something which has caused this split. So now the family has to survive on limited ration of milk (no one is worried about lack of water, by the way) and… that’s it.
This has to be one of the worst movies. Period. It is worse than Fountain of Youth, and that’s saying something. There is no point to the movie, there is no reasoning or build-up of the transportation of the neighbourhood, dinosaurs move around without causing distruction to property – they only eat humans, while their timber constructed houses have nary a scratch on them when humungous dinosaurs enter. There is also a scene where they show dinosaurs having an intimate moment with each other, to show they need to procreate, or to show the method of procreation, maybe? Don’t know. There is no point to anything in the movie. Their actions haven no logical deduction nor do they have a cause and effect. The only reason this movie was made was to make a female character like the hero which saves her family. Her success in this endeavour is debatable. The editing of the movie is a total “whatever” – in a scene when one of their friends is in danger, we can see Audrey controlling her laughter by biting her cheeks. Ewan McGregor is facing a dino, and has zero expression, because… The first half of the movie gave no hope and the second half took even that away.
Hollywood is increasingly and dangerously creeping close to very problematic ageism reserved for female actors, where there biggest claim to fame is the youthful and fit look they have despite their age. We saw this in Idea Of You and The Devil Wears Prada 2, and this only Hathaway. Nicole Kidman is another actor who is deep in the grips of this monster, which is neither healthy nor is proving anything to anyone. It is definitley possible to make a mark on the industry after a female actor reaches a certain age, case in point, Helen Mirren, who is thriving even when she has reached her 80s, and has appeared against a younger Pierce Brosnan in Mobland. So it is possible, the question is, who will slay the monster. Or better yet, who is the Frankenstein here? Is it the studios, producers, or the choice the female actors are making because it is only human to lament the loss of peak youth in a culture getting increasingly obsessed with youth. Is the culture feeding into this or vice versa? It is a question for the intellectuals, and hopefully we can arrive at a stage in the evolution where a woman can exist and embrace her age, and be happy with it.
In the meantime, watch anything else literally, even reality shows (maybe not). Just not this.