(Rating: 21 by The Film Snob.) (See our blog What-To-See-Next for details on our rating system.)
Here's a movie that will have you clawing at your own face in an attempt to earn release from the on-screen tedium.
You'll not be wringing your hands, nor rolling your eyes, nor sighing into your popcorn. No indeed. For a movie of *this* averagousity, only clawing at your own face will do.
When you begin to claw your own face -- as begin you must! -- start in at the lower portion. You'll need your upper portion, with its handy tear ducts, intact for the Truly Tear-jerking third act which may bring you to your knees if you haven't clawed your way clear of the entire theatre by then.
In a season celebrating Joe Six-Pack and Hockey Moms as the new Gold Standard for leadership and foreign diplomacy, permaybe a movie this tedium will be welcomed as A Thing that anyone could create. *Watching* it, however, is a much more dangerous undertaking.
Here's our story...
Sidney Young, the London publisher of a fourth-tier celebrity/entertainment magazine is just about to see his magazine go under. He needs a miracle, and what he gets is a phone call from New York City, in the USA.
The publisher of Sharp's magazine, Clayton Harding (played by Jeff Bridges) says "Come work for me!" With his own employees carrying out the fax machine out of his apartment/office in the background, saying "Yes" is a no-brainer.
Soon Sidney is at work in New York City, doing allllllll the wrong things. His interviews consist of asking Broadway musical directors if they are (1) Jewish, and (2) gay.
He kills the pet dog of Sohpie Maes, the industry's hottest movie star, when she leaves it in the magazine's offices during a business luncheon.
This is a spot of bad luck for everyone, for, among other things, Sidney imagines that he is in love with Maes, before he wakes up to the Dunst character.
Worst of all, he totally alienates Alison Olsen (played by winsome scripting-confusion by Kristen Dunst), a colleague assigned to show him the ropes of the magazine *and* The Big Apple. (We have, of course, been to a movie before, and so we know how this relationship is going to end up. This is therefore why we'll need intact tear ducts for the movie's third act.)
The problem with The Thing is, the script just never jells, excepting for the one tear-duct set piece in which True Love prevails.
Publisher Harding is supposed to be a son-of-a-bitch who also wants to just throw the whole job over. The script never comes down firmly on one or the other sides of this dichotomy, however, and Bridges is left to twist and waffle in the breeze.
Alison Olsen is supposed to despise Sidney Young, but whenever he comes up to her (as he does constantly) she makes a point of engaging him in conversation, instead of attempting to discourage his existence.
The "comedy" of early scenes is built around a piglet destroying an expensive hotel room, and then taking the elevator downstairs to urinate on the expensive high heels of a celebrity at a cocktail reception.
The hot starlet Maes confesses that she is attracted to Young because he is "wounded." The character never shows us *why* he is wounded, however. This is yet another resultant of the movie's mortally wounded script.
At one hours and fifty minutes, This Thing feels longer (and more deadly) than Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. It is uninspiring, unfunny, unredeemable, and not even rentable. Run Away