Clever hook for a movie...too bad movies also need ENDINGS.

Rating: 2/10 (3 April 2009)

04-03-2009-SP01L3RS-B3L0W
It was a great idea for a movie: What if they opened a time capsule and inside were predictions for every disaster of the last fifty years, plus predictions for three more - what would you do?
Well, in this film, it doesn't matter what you do. History is immutable. The so-called hero, after he goes through all this trouble to unravel the code...is powerless to save his own son. And apparently even angels (excuse me, aliens) who are capable of either time travel or extremely specific precognition...are uninterested in doing anything beyond saving thirty or forty kids.
Like "The Forgotten" (SPOILER!) about a mother whose child vanishes not only physically, but from all human record or memory except hers, this story resorts to advanced extraterrestrials to explain its mystery.
But the aliens here are a pretty useless bunch. They can predict the moment of a deadly solar flare 50 years in advance (not to mention many other much smaller disasters). So what do they do? Contact authorities, awe them with their predictions, get them building giant space arks to save a big chunk of the world's population (and, by the way, the culture that makes them human, as opposed to primate specimens)? Do these angels care about the incredible biodiversity of the doomed Earth? Nope. They'll whisk away a few dozen kids and some housepets (and to hell with everyone and everything else) then maroon them on an alien planet. No older members of their species, no technology to help them when, I dunno, it rains or snows...or someday a meteor comes along.
In six months, we'd be watching "The Lord of the Flies."
Apparently, all that these incredibly wise, angelic aliens care to preserve is our genetic stock (psi-power sub-variety). Socrates? Aquinas? Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Mozart, Jefferson, Emily Dickinson, Buster Keaton, Louis Armstrong, Tina Fey? Naah. Who needs that crap? We have a bunch of cute kids whose education stops at the fourth grade.
Terrible, boneheaded ending, the kind that sends an audience out in the foulest of moods, feeling condescended to and ripped off.