A Fun Time At The Theater

Rating: 10/10 (5 August 2002)

This was a very entertaining, and enjoyable movie for myself and my family. It's obvious that a lot of IMDB users, use Citizen Kane, The Godfather and Schindler's List as their basis for comparison to every movie they review, so they'll always have plenty to complain about. Fortunately, I'm not such a movie geek that I have to expound on each aspect of the film and I can look at it objectively for what it is; an opportunity to escape into the lives of some characters and watch them solve the problems that life throws at them. With that in mind, "Go see this movie." It's a good story to take your mind of off whatever problems you might be having and I can guarantee if you go, not expecting 'Gone With The Wind', you won't be disappointed. You should laugh, you may cry, you'll definitely jump out of your seat on occasion, only when you're not sitting on the edge of it. The movie provides some good discussion points, so you can talk about it afterwards over pizza with whomever you saw it with. What more could be expected? The story-line and plot-points have all been beat to death hear so I won't go there, but I would like to make some observations. I think M. Night Shyamalan's main interest is entertaining his audience, ala Spielberg, Hanks, and Eastwood. I'm sure if it was his goal to win a Best Movie oscar he could produce garbage like 'Sakespeare In Love' or 'American Beauty', but I believe it's more important to him that his film 'entertains' rather than 'achieve' and I applaud him for that. Another more selfish comment is that I would've really liked to have seen Bruce Willis in the Mel Gibson role. Not that Mel was bad, I thought he played the part well, but it would've been interesting to see how Bruce would've played it, while shooting the hat-trick with M. Night, after The Sixth Sense, and Unbreakable. My last point is, don't read more into the story than what it is, 'characters struggling against outside forces of conflict.' If you do that, you'll enjoy the film, but if you do feel compelled to analyze every frame, you may want to stay home and rent Casablanca instead.