M. Nightmare Sharlatan runs over Mel's wife so Mel takes revenge by turning in a truly bad performance.

Rating: Null/10 (13 October 2009)

Mel tries so hard to play some imagined stereotype of what a small-town, uptight Protestant priest is supposed to be like that he ends up acting like a robot. A robot with the occasional sob-attack. Badly miscast. But what could have we expected from a director who considers Phoenix and Adrien Brody great actors
Mel cries on several occasions and it's nothing less than comical. MNS is a BAD director. He doesn't have a clue how to cast his movies, nor does he recognize situations in which actors make jackasses of themselves, thereby stretching the (intelligent) viewer's patience.
Hmm Mel is a staunch Catholic in real life. Perhaps he made the Protestant priest look foolish on purpose?... Nothing about this devious anti-Semite would surprise me anymore.
Interspersed in-between all the x-file-ish malarkey are idiotic "cute"- meant-to-be-funny comic-relief scenes like the astoundingly silly "3 to 2" vote, or Gibson vs. rest of family. That's straight out of a failed Saturday Night Live sketch.
Speaking of his dull family, that son A typical Hollywood-movie kid: a 225 I.Q. Yet where did he get that intelligence from? Mel the priest?? Perhaps Mom had a fling with a nuclear scientist while Mel was busy talking to God There is nothing wrong with intelligent kids as such, but it does start to get very irritating when 9 out of 10 directors opt for the "ultra-bright brat" cliché. This movie could really have used a dose of realism; by portraying a normal kid, i.e. one who doesn't act and talk like an adult, this would have been one small but wise step towards that. The kid dishes out advice like Oprah Winfrey on speed, and reveals a vocabulary larger than Mark Twain's, while he quotes Dr.Bimbu's idiotic book.
Dr.Bimbu. With "Signs", MNS has stepped into the retarded realm of the many charlatans, liars, and other esoteric witch-doctors of this idiotic New Age. Everything "Penn & Teller" would label as "100% B.S." MNS will eventually stick into his increasingly absurd movies, trying to sell it as science rather than sheer mindless fun. Thereby, MNS has willfully joined the dumbing-down, anti-science bandwagon. Whether that is due to stupidity or greed isn't even relevant. "Signs" is yet another in a plethora of high-profile contributions towards turning us all into morons. But must we all end up like Sean Penn? Screw Dr.Bimbu.
Speaking of modern-day myths for gullible, miracle-hungry fools, why would any advanced and hostile alien civilization make those damn silly Crap Circles? "Greetings, Earthmen. We're trying to hide from you, hence avoid jeopardizing our plans for attack, but here are a few 200-meter- long clues we left lying around for you to muse over, just for the fun of it"
"The nerds were right", says ne'er-too-bright, bat-waving Phoenix. I suppose that MNS – being a mega-nerd himself – wanted nerds to be taken more seriously, especially when they drool over silly UFO theories. But he made a slight mistake, the confused man that he is: those are morons, not nerds.
A news announcer tells us in all honesty: "What you are about to see may upset you." So what happens? What is this horrible Shyamalayian sight that might twist our stomachs into knots? A GREEN B-MOVIE ALIEN. Either that or an emaciated Sasqwatch. Ed Wood's influence has always been totally under-appreciated.
The alien attack has just been repelled, yet all bunny-lipped Phoenix wants to do is talk to Mel about his "loss of faith". So Hollywood Pathetic, soppy family drama with touches of "uplifting" religious re- awakening baloney, serving as a substitute for originality or interesting plot-twists. Spiffing.
Was Phoenix's miraculous "girlfriend vomits during kissing" anecdote lifted from "South Park"? Anything else M. Night Sharlatan wants to admit to have stolen from other TV shows and other movies?...
"Signs" is a poor man's "Independence Day": focus on just one family and one house (i.e. an inexpensive setting), and you don't have to spend tons of money on special effects. Save the little money you have (after having paid a fortune to Mel for a truly bad performance) on the one or two shoddy-looking green aliens. Even the two lethargic catatonics in "X-Files" would have been embarrassed to play opposite such dumb spielbergian outer-space twits.
In a way I was saddened by the failed invasion attempt. A victory by the bug-eyes would have meant no more MNS movies, and not a single additional turd by Emir Kusturica or Spike Lee.
H20 as a skin-melting acid? MNS re-writes some basic laws of chemistry, not just physics and interstellar space-travel.
But if you thought this MNS movie was a turkey, just check out "The Happening"
So why are nearly all movie aliens NAKED? We LIVE on Earth and yet we need clothes, but outer-space mongrels with utterly different biological set-ups just come here and prance around in the nude as if they'd been here for aeons.
Sharlatan kills his aliens with water, Spielberg (of "War of the Worlds" fame) executes them with the swine flu. It's only a matter of time until Robert Rodriguez comes up with aliens even dumber than these. How will Hollywood's next alien invasion abruptly end? Will they die from AIDS because they're all gay? Will they flee in terror after watching an episode of "Ally McBeal"? Or will humans discover telepathy and send those deadly Paris Hilton brainwaves into the alien invaders' collective heads?