A Movie-thing and Nullity that Craves Redemption

Rating: 1/10 (29 September 2007)

If you're like me, you just had to read the "Hated It!" reviews here as soon as possible after your viewing, as expiation for the passive sin of watching this thing.
I spent no money to watch this film in a roomful of people who spent the same (a local community college screens films for free, with free popcorn and soda, for students and instructors and alumni and their kids).
Still it was too high a price, for time's arrow only runs one way, and I can't get that time back.
Redemption comes partly from skimming the "Hated It!" comments here, for the witty one-liners we lay reviewers invent to compensate for having sat through such dreck.
Now, I'm nearly 50, and hardly have brain-room for pointless stories. My brain has experience though, and though it was hopeful at first that the opening scene portended some subtle indictment of the Bush Presidency in the guise of a Disney movie, it quickly set itself to "Eyes Wide Shut" mode.
But, what about my young godson's wasted time? Or the time we'll have to waste together while I try to help him purge this thing from his brain? He's nine, his experience is limited. This thing was shown on the same screen where he's watched real movies for kids, and now I have to figure out how to explain how "Thing: Three" was not a movie at all, just noise and sound.
For a filmed effort such as this, it's denigatory to useful words, to critique it using the words "characters", "acting", or "plot". Just to use those words, implies that somewhere in this thing some shred of those concepts had life.
I vaguely recall seeing Mr. Depp on Letterman's show earlier in 2007, to pimp this thing. He mentioned there that he'd recently been able to buy some small (Caribbean?) island with his wealth, for his amusement and family escape from the demands of fame as an actor.
So, he's clipped a fat coupon for appearing in this thing, and bravo! to him. It's one gross green way to redeem that the picture was made at all.
I fear there's a karmic curse, like the one for the Bloom character, on everyone who participated in this thing: every ten years, they'll have one day to genuinely shine and make love to the craft that brought each of them to the making of this thing.
It's useless to review this thing in a conventional sense. It begs for a meta-review, as a bellwether of the culture and community that let it be advertised and edited and screened at all.
As a technical exercise, some serious film student might try for a witty parody, but even that effort would pay it more attention than the thing deserves. It barely merits comparison with the tar in the LaBrea tar pits, let alone the bones of the poor creatures who lost life sinking into that oily morass.
Kudos to the monkey. Kudos to the stunt man who pitched himself out of the rowboat early on: that looked real, and if not CGI was a tricky stunt.
The rest? grey noise, shot in the color of money, signifying nothing, not even popcorn action entertainment.