Some problems...

Rating: 5/10 (9 September 2002)

I think the movie has some serious flaws that affect the final product all around. One thing that bothered me the most was the children. Malcom, the son, sometimes looks very smart, over average, but sometimes looks like a fool. In the end, I can't say if he's a genius or just an average little boy, because the script drags him from one extreme to the other. And Bo...well, if I have to define that character, is more like a crazy child, a mad little girl. But in fact, we don't know if she's crazy, or just her childish imagination, playing tricks on her. Her line, that has been part of the trailer, in which she speaks to her father, in serious tone: `There's a monster outside my room...can I have a glass of water?' represents the major problem with her. We don't know if she's joking, or if she's serious. In that line, she looks to be mad, or possessed, and that's the way she goes through the movie, without a real explanation or justification, just to fulfill the roll of another `sign'. Those are problems with the script, not the acting, which by the way I think is good. And the jokes...there are far too many jokes or "funny" situations in this movie, that not always work well or are funny enough. Sometimes they're just plain silly. In `The Sixth Sense', the most renowned movie of the `Signs' director, the jokes were adequate, in perfect balance with the rest of the movie. Here, they really endanger the seriousness of the movie and the topic it deals with... Which, in the end, is the question of faith. That's the most interesting point of the movie. It's not a movie about aliens, is about one person's faith, the lose and the recovery. But, as interesting as this may seem, there lies the final flaw of this movie. If I loose my faith, the message of this movie is that I would need the kind of happenings, coincidences, better yet, miracles, like the movie presents, to get my faith back again. And that, for me, is a very hopeless thought. And that would be the same for anybody...except if they believe in miracles, indeed. 6/10