M. Night Charlatan's predictable little politically-correct message-movie.

Rating: Null/10 (11 March 2009)

I've got some very, very bad news for PETA and other vegans and veggies... Apparently, plants can communicate with one another, think, and even plan out highly-organized attacks in which humans commit mass-suicides. What does this harbor for the future? It means that from now on PETArds will have to abandon flora as their only source of nourishment (and what a shame it would be to not have all those noble vegan minds survive!). After we've all learned in recent decades that animals have souls and legal rights, that dolphins can calculate complex mathematical equations, that cow milk has clandestine poisons, that bunnies are in fact deeply philosophical beings, and last but not least that fish are "kittens of the sea" - now it turns out that mere plants are the Lucrecia Borgias of the forests. First they were carnivores, then vegetarians, and then the uniquely astute vegans: the logical next step for Petards would be to become "airians": perhaps we can convince the world's most brilliant scientific minds to work on finding ways to feed the rising numbers of Petards with... air...? Throw some ketchup on it - and voilÃ ! L'oxygene de la yummy-yummy.
Unfortunately, air can only serve as food until we find out that oxygen, too, has a soul and an intelligence, hence has the right to live undisturbed and unkilled. After this happens (and no doubt it will be Hollywood or Moby the DJ to be the first to sell this marvelous idea to us) they'll have to find not only alternative ways to feed themselves but to breathe as well! Perhaps carbon dioxide? Sure, it's poisonous, but it might not have a soul. It ain't easy being a PETArd...
"Signs" was pathetic and "The Village" was drawn out and filled with a truly horrible cast, so I really didn't expect much from the latest MNC offering. The downward quality curve in Mr.Charlatan's career is as plain and obvious as Madonna's tooth-gap. And, as if wanting to emulate that in his movies as well, "The Happening" is pretty much the same: it starts off very well, but gets worse and worse, heading shamelessly into a conclusion so predictable, that even fans of Latin soapers would sniff it out from afar.
Tuh-duh: it's nature fighting back against man! Man: that wicked, wicked Industrialist, that bipedal Capitalist creature that actually dares exploit the resources of this planet to stay alive. We've already had this kind of nonsense in movies before (hence the silly premise isn't even original) such as in "The Last Winter"; but at least the said movie was very well-acted and had top-notch photography and good dialogue. "The Happening", on the other hand, is directed with the vigour of a nursing-home nap, and written with the ingeniousness of a glue-sniffing 6th-grader. The dialogue and the acting were always dangerously teetering on the edge of unintentional comedy, but it's small wonder when you have Marky Mark cast in the leading role as a CARING SCIENCE teacher. The less said about the minute - and endlessly irrelevant - subplot concerning his apathetic wife cheating on him, the better. And I will also try not to mention that when the train stops at a remote Pennsylvanian village, everyone suddenly has cars to hop into when panic breaks out... I guess perhaps cars might be conscious beings too, much like terrorist plants, hence are able to drive on their own in search of their human owners... Who am I to say it isn't possible? I am neither as brilliant as Mr.Charlatan nor as intellectually perceptive as PETArds.
"Run from the wind, run!" When a movie has the main characters trying to out-run a wind, you know you're in trouble. Or perhaps it wasn't a wind, but this script f**ting.
If there is anything nature should rebel against, it's the poisonous fumes coming out of Tinseltown's derriere.
I guess it's too much to ask from Tinseltown to make the occasional horror film, thriller - let alone drama - these days without spicing them up with some lame Leftist-propaganda nonsense. Either it's gay rights, or it's pollution, or it's about evil market economies, or how murderous and conspiratorial those oh-so corrupt evil Western democracies are, etc etc etc.
The easiest thing in the world is to write something preachy and predictable - especially when it's this retarded. But presenting the increasingly dumbed-down audiences with an actual original story, devoid of political malarkey, with intelligent dialogue and a cast uninfected with talentless nepotistic offspring: that, I guess, is too much to ask for.
Zoooooey Dechanel has the acting skills of a tired amoeba. Her perpetual moronic, apathetic stare does not exactly help this cretinous little turkey.