"That's a nice-a donut."

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Cellular (2004)

Surprisingly, Cellular is almost a good film. I'm sure we've all had experiences where, for whatever reason (be it negative word of mouth or poor critical reviews), we have low expectations for a film. More often than not, these low expectations are matched and the movie is just as big of a stinker as we had imagined. But ever so often, we are pleasantly surprised by our enjoyment in the quality of the movie.

The plot of the film can be loosely described as Speed meets Phone Booth. One morning, several bad looking men break into Jessica Martin's (Kim Basinger) home and kill her housekeeper and ruthlessly kidnap her. She is tied up and taken to an unknown location, where she is locked in a room somewhere. To make matters worse, the main henchman named Ethan (Jason Statham) smashed the telephone - her only hope of getting help. Of course she is terrified, and she has no idea what they want with her other than some vague threat about her husband. Soon enough though she has managed to string some wires on the broken phone together and a random phone call is placed into the unwitting hands of Ryan (Chris Evans) on his cell phone. A frantic chase then starts for Ryan to get help to rescue Jessica before she and her family end up dead.

Despite the fact that I imagine most people will be able to accurately predict whether or not Jessica is saved, the film provides some moments of very good suspense. A couple small twists also help. For instance, throughout the first half of the film, we are left wondering who the heck the vicious kidnappers really are. When we do find out it probably won't make your head spin around, but a blink or two is quite likely. The action is fast-paced; the story was obviously developed by minds out of the MTV Generation, and for this particular movie, that's a good thing. Evans (who is probably most familiar now as the Human Torch in the recent Fantastic Four flick) moves things along smoothly and does a solid, likeable job as the hero.

For each of the positives about Cellular, there are a few unfortunate lapses and problems that keep it from getting a thumbs-up. First of all, Kim Basinger again leaves me scratching my head about the fact that she will forever be known as an Academy Award winner. Though, in fairness, I suppose she doesn't have too much to work with here as her character is in a continuous state of distress. So we get a lot of cringing, screaming, and crying, but nothing to attest that she is anything other than a robot. Also, there is some strange editing and too little exposition, especially in the beginning. Yet, way too much time is spent on Jessica Biel's character - completely irrelevant to the story. So, it's as if a very close eye was being kept on the running time, yet time is wasted on what should have been a fringe character. For what ...to capitalize on Biel's big box office drawing power?

Of course, the masterful way in which Jessica Martin acts like some sort of electrical engineer in order to rig the smashed telephone is beyond believable. But, if you ignore that and a few of the other issues, then Cellular is a pretty fun time. Go in with low expectations and you'll probably be fairly pleased.

The Verdict: C+.

Michael Bentley 1:29 PM

"That's a nice-a donut."

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

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