I felt so cheated

Rating: 2/10 (27 April 2008)

Within the first ten minutes of this movie, I whispered to my companion, "I think I know the ending. Except I'm going to set myself on fire if I'm right, because it's so awful."
Well folks, I was right. I avoided self-immolation, but several years later I'm still indignant over the loss of that $10 and 2+ hours of my life.
Other reviewers have done a fair job of summarizing and analyzing, but there were some particular clunker elements that bear revisiting:

The dialogue. Dear lord, who scripted this? I swear to you, at one point the little blind girl actually had to say the words, "Do you find me too much a tomboy? I so long to do boy things!" The whole theater exploded in guffaws. I would love to know how many takes it took for her to spit that out with a straight face. This is but one example - minute to minute, the whole script is equally stilted and ridiculous.

The Big Dramatic scene. You know, where Baby Phoenix heroically grabs said blind girl's hand and the movie switches into slow-mo "Chariots of Fire" mode? A kid a few seats over shouted, "Yo, this is some "Titanic" s**t!" For which I thank him, because without the comic relief, we all might have been weeping in frustration and rage.

And there's so much more. Really, this film was one big train wreck. I'm generally pretty tolerant of those overly precious, self-consciously clever "thought" pieces... but the implicit contract is that there has to be SOME substance backing up all that abstract cleverness. M. Night failed to deliver on that promise. I still feel cheated.