How to Get a Nice Beard Trim

Rating: 1/10 (23 August 2013)

I love a good sci-fi movie. Even in ones with preposterous scenarios, if the film-makers can find ways to make it credible or can display some cleverness in the presentation, I'll buy in. It's called suspension of disbelief. I had some hope for "Elysium", because the idea of a giant, floating space wheel where .01 per cent of the "other half" lives really stirred my imagination. Mind you, I had some questions about its atmosphere and the sun's lethal radiation in space, but these vital scientific issues were never touched upon. Other reviewers on this site have effectively lambasted the film for its suspect science, so I'll merely recap by saying: The film-makers seem to think that if they just show it the audience will believe it.
I'd like to zero in on those cure-all medical pods in the movie. The door opens, you place the sick person inside, the door closes, the machine diagnoses the problem and - presto! - the person is cured. It works for leukemia, severed limbs and faces that have been torn off (and I swear that the face in question grew back without acne scars or grey hairs in the beard - yes, a finely trimmed beard grew back, too!). This isn't science, or science-fiction. It's magic. It occurred to me that with such magical medical machines all over the place this could have been a movie about immortality. Because you could certainly cure death.
I expect more from a big-budget movie in an age bristling with scientific knowledge. Fifty years ago this type of cheese would have seemed pretty nifty, but not under present-day circumstances. It's not even a well-made movie, with its choppy pacing and inability to allow the audience to inhabit any of the physical spaces it shows on screen. Poor Matt barely gets a chance to breathe let alone develop a character; and then there's Jodie Foster, who practically bellows her lines and wears a facial expression that suggests rectal discomfort. Maybe she should try one of those magic pods.