Good acting, so-so movie (possible spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (29 August 2004)

There seems to be a bi-modal distribution of opinions here about _The Village_: most people either loved it or hated it. I guess I'm one of the smaller group in the middle. I thought it was entertaining and worth the eight dollar ticket, but nothing special.
Like many, most of my criticisms of the movie concern the plausibility of the premise. It's hard to imagine that *no one* among the younger generation has ever doubted the existence of the creatures in the forest or felt the urge to see the outside world. And wouldn't it have made much more sense to send one of the Elders to get the medicine? And what happens the next time someone gets sick? Where do they get the glass to fix broken windows? If they can't enter the forest, where do they get the wood to build their houses? Etcetera. I'm sure explanations can be contrived for any of these things, but that's the point: they'd be contrived. In some ways, the movie -- particularly the way everyone seems to unquestioningly accept supernatural explanations for their world -- would have been a little more appropriate to, say, 897 rather than 1897.
And while the Elders are presented sympathetically, I found their entire project to be distasteful. What right do they have to keep an entire generation of people isolated and ignorant, even to the point of unnecessary death? If this were a better movie, it would be about the consequences of their narcissism and misguided utopianism.