The Happening  Does anybody know or care?

Rating: 6/10 (28 June 2008)

The Happening  Does anybody know or care? Rated: R Time: 1:31 Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, and others Final Grade: C- Summary: I'm reminded of the song by the group Chicago  "Does anybody know what time it isdoes anybody care?" This is lightweight plot centered around a Philadelphia high school science teacher(Wahlberg) and his wife(Deschanel) and their flight to safety while all around them are either dropping dead from some mysterious presumedly airborne toxin or shooting each other or committing suicide in any variety of gruesome ways. If you want a lightweight horror flick with minimal plot, lots of blood, guts, gore and stupidity, well, you found it.
Our story starts out in New Yorks central park were people are freezing in their tracks and when they're not putting guns to their heads, they're dropping off of buildings or walking in front of carsfor no reason. Needless to say, there's some folks that are either survivors or just happen to live longer and they run like hell out of the city.
News of the events sweeps to Philadelphia, as does our plot, and shifts to a high school teacher who's wife would rather share tiramisu with her new boyfriend than try to understand reality of needing to evacuate in the presence of a catastrophic event. She's a real bimbo, but a cute one and I don't think anyone wouldn't offer to share his tiramisu (or anything else) with her, given the opportunity.
Recognizing the pending threat, our science teacher and his wife bolt from town into the eastern Pennsylvania farmland. Needless to say, the plague follows to Philadelphia and beyond. More people die, more commit suicide and you're forced to watch it, all the time wondering what the hell you're doing in this theater with this stupid movie.
Well, as you would expect, at the end, teacher and wife survive, reunite and guess what, she's preggersand the movie ends, all is right with the world and we cut to the credits I'm sorry folks, but this flick is a waste of time. What's hilarious is that at the end of the flick, even though it's 3 months after the event has stopped, all appears to be returned to normal in Philadelphiawhen during the movie, basically all live from the Mason-Dixon line to Nova Scotia is presumed to be dead! Beam me up Scottie, there's no intelligent life in this movie.
But, at the end of the day, it does make one take a moment to ask themselves some simple questions: If you had to totally bug out of your home in 15 minutes, what would you take with you? Where would you go? How would you get there? How would you communicate with the rest of your family? This flick is about survival in a major catastrophic event. How would you do? Would you survive? Something to think about  since there's really nothing to think about in this movie.
And that's the way I saw it, From Where I Stand.
( The writer is a frequent contributor to www.fromwhereistand.info )