MNS might want to look at retirement

Rating: 1/10 (23 June 2008)

I have not had to watch a more dreadful piece of utter schlock garbage in years than "The Happening." The notion that plants could seek revenge or defend themselves against humans is credible, as research has shown, but this movie does its best to make something that is serious seem utterly ridiculous. No attention span is needed as everything is fed to us spoonful by spoonful. The writers have also obviously been out of touch with their own educational experience for some time now - any high school science teacher who spoke to an inner city senior or junior class the way the script has Mark Wahlberg pontificating would likely be knifed in the halls or sent down to Kindergarten to teach. He is so utterly patronizing in that scene that it is hard to believe that he wasn't just rushed and put out of his misery right there and then, which would have saved me another hour and 15 or so minutes of pain...
John Leguiziamo's role is also disastrously badly written, and the "doe-eyed" Zooey Deschanel is just plain dumb and creepy. The attempts at character development in this film are so bad, one wonders if they were not written by MNS's daughters, nieces, high school-aged groupies - what have you...
From the point of common-sense alone (the plants spread their toxins by giving off the deadly, invisible brew which is wind-borne, but the wind apparently can be magically summoned by the plants to do their dirty work - this entire premise is never explained or even alluded to as it would have exposed the entire premise of the film as the ridiculous tripe it was) I went after reading another review here (warning me dutifully of plenty of spoilers) but the description of this film as utterly shocking and extremely bloody was unwarranted and overly cautious, probably the work of a soccer mom... Sweeney Todd the musical is much bloodier and more extreme in its scenes of mayhem than any part of The Happening except for one scene in which Mrs. Jones does herself in toward the very end...
If this is the best MNS can now bring forth, his steam is obviously running out. Time to hang up your hat, MNS???