The Cell is the movie to which I refer. I saw it last night. It was terrible. What a waste of money and talent. Don’t get me wrong, there was absolutely no talent apparent among the cast, but the crew accomplished something remarkable. Had the entire movie been left up to the art director, Guy Dyas, and the cinematographer, Paul Laufer, The Cell might have made my list of favorite movies.
Unfortunately, the entire film was soiled by incredibly weak dialogue. It would have been so simple and beautiful to tell the story with just images and sound, but Hollywood had to go and ruin a good thing by producing a film by the traditional over used and idiotic formula.
The happy ending didn’t help much either, I must say. An alternate ending of horrific dashing of hopes that dawned on me immediately would have made up for all the weak writing and acting. Ah, well. Just one more cinematographic masterpiece lost to the poison of marketing.
Should you get roped into seeing this film, I strongly suggest that you try to imagine it without the least bit of dialogue. Allow yourself to get carried away with the imagery and try to forget that Jennifer Lopez exists as an actress.
Hmmm… I loved the show. All of it. I don’t remember thinking the dialog was particularly bad (or particularly good, for that matter) and the characters were one sided, but it was an ACTION/SCIFI/ADVENTURE film. What do you expect? For the genre it was in, it was excellent, IMO. 'twasn’t “Lawrence of Arabia” but then again, “LoA” isn’t “The Cell.”
The cinematics were beautiful. There was no annoying non sequiter that left you thinking “Huh? How did THAT happen?” Things progressed logically, and there was more than enough to hold up the suspension of belief necessary for such films. Jennifer Lopez was a little wooden, but then again, most 20 something bimbos act a little funny even in real life.
Well, I think Slithy Tove’s comment says a lot. This movie was obviously made in the style of Se7en. When comparing the plausibility of the two plots as established by dialogue, The Cell seems particularly weak.
Why could they not have left it as a non-specific psycho-physiological disorder? Why did they have to make claims about viral schizophrenia? Does it make sense to port happy thoughts into someone’s head in order to cure a physical ailment? I don’t think so. Had they never mentioned the specific ailment, my imagination would have had a much better time with this film. Instead, I was left thinking “Okay, and just WTF is she trying to accomplish?”
Another minor bit that just dawned on me is that Jennifer’s character was an employee of an organization that had lots of money. The technology that they employed, if it existed, would not come cheap. She possessed a skill, the use of which put her jeopardy. You’d think having such a tough job for such a wealthy company would have some perks. Why then, did she live in that little apartment? Why then was she driving that boxy old station wagon from the 80’s?
I do agree with you, Athena. I like what they tried to do for the genre, but I just wish they had taken it all the way instead of slapping together the plot and dialogue as they did.
I don’t know, I really liked the movie. I don’t know where Slithy gets the Pretty Woman part from. I would describe it as Silence of the Lambs meets The Matrix (which, I believe, a critic already has referred to it as). Kind of like SotL in that it’s getting in the mind of a criminal, and because it is literally getting in the mind you get your cool surreal visuals with that hint of The Matrix.
I don’t see how you could go to a mainstream theater expecting to see a cinematographic masterpiece that’s also a serial killer movie, and starring Jennifer Lopez? I actually went in with my expectations rather low. I thought it might be a fun movie to go see as a matinee. I was very pleasantly surprised.
They did focus mainly on the cinematography and art direction. Nearly half of the movie was in someone’s mind, and the cinematography and look was amazing. Now, I admit the acting wasn’t great, but I didn’t go in expecting it to be. But it was tolerable. I could stand it, easily. After seeing Elizibeth Shue stumble her way through Hollow Man, Lopez looked like a true thespian. And Donofrio was pretty darn good. Look at all of the roles he played in the movie. Okay, I admit the dialogue wasn’t all that good. But there hardly was any dialogue. The look and the silence made the movie creepy and good. If, in a visual movie, the characters went off on 10 minute long diatribes, it would no longer be a visual movie.
Do you not find it frustrating, silent_rob, that you can go to a movie these days expecting poor acting and writing when all other artistic and technical elements of movie making have come so far?
That’s why I believe The Cell would have been so much better without a single spoken word. The story told by the imagery was much more convincing than what was presented in the dialogue. In fact, the poor dialogue and the weak story elements that it introduced served to jolt me away from what was otherwise a wonderful film.
Yeah, I agree with you whole-heartedly there. I’m a filmmaker and a film lover, and it’s disappointing to have so little really good films to look forward to, especially after last year. American Beauty and Being John Malkovich amazed and pleased me to no end. The acting in Boys Don’t Cry was simply remarkable. Not to mention many of the other movies that came out. Now it seems like it’s been forever since a really good movie came out. I’m so tired of “summer blockbusters”. Then, when really good movies do come out, it’s usually just for one weekend at the art theater. And if you miss it, you gotta wait six months until video.
Yeah, but you also have to be realistic. However much I generally dislike Hollywood, movie producers still want to make money. I recently saw an experimental film from Vancouver that was a woman pulling a large sheet of plastic wrap over the camera in a factory over, and over. The film and sound, however, were manipulated so as to change the meaning, and make it very thoughtful. You could easily argue that the piece was a diatribe on war. There are a minority of the population, though, that would enjoy this and films like it. Hollywood has conditioned the public to like certain types of movies and dislike others, and those that don’t follow that are forced to deal with it (sad to say).
If The Cell were an independent, it would have been more artistic. But then they wouldn’t have been able to get the studio backing, because they couldn’t put a big actress in it. Then they couldn’t have done the visuals. I think they reached a fairly happy medium. They were able to put in a lot of visuals, and make the studio quite a bit of money. I do understand what you mean though.
This was my pet peeve. They got someone who looks so much like D’Onofrio to play the lead guy that I was distracted thinking, is it he? No…maybe…Yes…no…etc. ad nauseum. If I could have let go of that I would have been totally into it. I thought Ms. Lopez did the right thing in keeping her voice quiet because any louder and it would have sounded bad. This way it created a false sense of character.
All in all, I was pleasantly surprised going in knowing nothing about it.