Sex Offender Sci-Fi?

Rating: 4/10 (12 September 2009)

As a big fan of Nicholas Cage since City of Angels, this newest flick seemed like a natural... and hopefully, at least as well done as his efforts in the recent 'National Treasure' series.
It didn't happen that way.
The story looks easily predictable in the beginning... and similar to several standard sci-fi scripts that have appeared before; with one later Outer Limits series episode being quickly familiar. You'll recognize the genre too: The world is going to end and time is limited.
After that, there are children involved, siblings, parents, grandparents, an institution of higher learning and what could have been a really effective romance... even if not in some ethereal sort of way. In fact, you will think that this is exactly where it is taking you until the female lead is mashed in a car accident and then left to die on an ambulance gurney without so much as a parting word for the audience, or cold kiss for good old Nick.
Oh... and there are the obligatory UFOs and aliens, but they are only interested in our children.
Yup, that's right, and with the combination of make-up/appearance and the unerringly suggestive story path, it is fairly convincing to boot. You might even wonder whether these ETs shouldn't be on a sex offender list instead of flitting about the universe snatching kids from dying planets.
Hey, I'm sorry but... they just seemed too doggone happy to leave dear old Dad to fry on this rock while beaming up his adolescent son and the daughter of that now-deceased mother, who was left in an abandoned ambulance to attract flies at the scene of the accident!
In the end, everyone, Dad, Mom, Grandma, Grandpa, Sister... all die. But as for the kids? The ones who got in the car with ET? They are (apparently) set free on some exotic other-world where they are last seen romping in wild wheat under an alien moon.
(You're left alone to guess (haphazardly even) just how many people had a hand in trying to paint some kind of ending to this horribly suffering script... and our otherwise far more deserving actors.)
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