An insult to anybody who finished elementary school

Rating: 1/10 (23 August 2009)

I have recently been watching a string of movies dealing with time travel/parallel universes, such as Primer, La Moustache, The Machinist. Deja Vu seemed to fit the category, so I decided to give it a try. While most of the other movies were a bit obscure, this one had a sizable budget and did well in the box office. A 7.1 looks good, so I was expecting something meaningful. Boy did I get burned. This movie is atrocious.
The protagonist is Doug Carlin, also known as DIAPR, Denzel In Another Police Role. In the beginning it didn't seem too bad. A terrible 9/11 like terrorist attack kills 543 men, women and children in New Orleans. A team of specialists are assigned to tackle the investigation.
Enter Doug. A loudmouth, annoying, overpaid ATF agent. He drops in shouting ''who's in charge'' like some sort of action hero, then laughs when it turns out to be some fat dude, which is always cause for hilarity, and goes for coffee. (let's get our priorities straight, eh?) He proceeds to watch footage of what appears to be a suspect for the terrorist attack, at which point some other dimwit cop makes a joke about how he's taking a leak on the highway, and Doug bursts out in uncontrollable laughter.
Can it get any more unprofessional? Over 500 people just died in the greatest attack on the USA since the Twin Towers, and nobody seems the least bit shaken.
But it gets worse. We finally get to the time machine bit. Of course the scientists don't bother explaining how it all works to Doug, because they quite rightly figure out he's not the brightest bulb.
Then the really good part. Doug decides to point a laser pen at the screen, which of course CAUSES THE SYSTEM TO CRASH. Hunh?! So is this screen a direct portal to the past, or something? I'd say NOT, seeing as how they have a special chamber to teleport small animals and pieces of paper to the past. So what exactly is the logic behind this? There is none.
Then Doug gets enraged, and demands to know how this machine really works. They try to tell him. But no, even the dumbed down, layman's terms explanation are too much for Doug to handle, and he demands an even simpler explanation? What? Was this movie targeted at preschoolers? Which part of ''space time continuum'' is so hard to understand? Is the folding paper example really necessary? It's obvious the writers didn't have a clue what Quantum Mechanics are, nor did they hire a consultant to help them with it. They oversimplified and altered the entire theory so that any Joe Average can understand it. What's the point of technobabble if it's crystal clear to everybody what they are saying anyway? Anyway, Doug continues to be out-of-control angry, and even smashes up an expensive monitor to have an example of what ''death'' means. Broken monitor means dead. Brilliant. I guess the taxpayers won't mind if you randomly destroy government property for no real reason, with no repercussions. It was at this point that I switched off the movie.
This garbage is an insult to anybody with half a brain. I realize this is an action movie, but when the protagonist is such an unlikeable bastard who I wish got a bullet to the brain, it's obvious I'm not gonna enjoy the rest.
1 out of 10 stars. Don't waste your time on this, not even as a joke