A major disappointment

Rating: 3/10 (3 August 2002)

I am a fan of Mel Gibson's pretty much since Road Warrior, and I loved Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, so went to see Signs with every expectation of really liking it. It's been a long time since I've been so disappointed in a movie. The story, if you can call it such, moves at the speed of molasses; the director uses every cheap trick of lighting, photography, camera angle and timing to create a tension that really doesn't exit; the movie is full of clichÃ©s, platitudes and just plain silliness; almost everything on the screen is stolen from some other movie--Night of the Living Dead, Children of the Corn, Close Encounters--the list goes on; the plot has more holes than Swiss cheese and in the end you feel cheated by all the contrived sentimentality. Mel Gibson is so inert he almost implodes; Joaquin Phoenix is a joke; the two children (Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin) fall all over themselves and each other as to which one can be the most precious or the most profound. So much bad acting from what are some pretty good actors must be the fault of the director who obviously wanted to create something with deep meaning but succeeded only in boring me and my wife and sons to tears.
***SPOILER***
Of all the evasions and implausibilities in the movie, the one that kept bugging us as we discussed it while driving home from the theater is this one: If water has the same effect on the bodies of the aliens that, say, sulfuric acid has on humans, why would they invade a planet that is mostly made up of water and do so in the buff? Couldn't they stop at Wall Mart first and pick up wet suits and umbrellas?