cinemabon
03-24-2009, 08:28 AM
In "Knowing" director Alex Proyas has presented a film made up of little familiarities one recognizes as we watch..."Wait a minute," your mind speaks, "that seems oddly familiar." Let's see.... mysterious voices that whisper to the supporting cast of future disasters (oh, how many films have used that plot device)... aliens appear in the woods at night, only to slip away... "Yes, keep going..." a time capsule reveals that the writer knew about the future all along... "Ok...." when the aliens peel back their skin, they are shiny underneath "Now just a minute... Didn't Ron Howard use that in "Cocoon"? In fact, there are many similarities with this film's plot and "Cocoon" such as the alien space craft that rescues the characters or that the aliens can fly and appear to have wings like angels or that they appear to have multiple spacecraft that simultaneously take off at the end to save humanity from their ultimate fate or that a celestial event will spell the end of mankind. In fact, nearly every part of this film, whether its the fact that the main character is an "astro-physicist" or that he conveniently lost his wife in an accident that was meant to be, seems all too familiar!
Instead of "ah-ha!" as a moment of revelation, I felt more relief that the credits rolled when the "special" children ran through a field of rolling weird wheat toward the big white tree ("Oh my God... Lord of the Rings?"). My son and I picked the weaknesses in the film apart all the way home. We laughed at the absurdity of a gigantic space craft able to go faster than the speed of light, zipping through the Milky Way galaxy and not have any impact visa vie gravity on the objects around it. Or that the aliens simply dropped off children on a strange planet without regard for their biosphere (we can eat the plants on this planet because we evolved simultaneously together... bacteria and virus don't simply kill us outright due to our progressively strengthened immune systems, etc).
The plot is rehashed. The performances wooden (Nicolas Cage drank enough whiskey to drown the most stout alcoholic and then sprang into action on wakening with no hang over? Highly unlikely!). Yet, one cannot argue with success, as "Knowing" swept the box office. Perhaps it had more to do with the fact that once the audience knows about "Knowing" they will know to stay away. I know better now.
Instead of "ah-ha!" as a moment of revelation, I felt more relief that the credits rolled when the "special" children ran through a field of rolling weird wheat toward the big white tree ("Oh my God... Lord of the Rings?"). My son and I picked the weaknesses in the film apart all the way home. We laughed at the absurdity of a gigantic space craft able to go faster than the speed of light, zipping through the Milky Way galaxy and not have any impact visa vie gravity on the objects around it. Or that the aliens simply dropped off children on a strange planet without regard for their biosphere (we can eat the plants on this planet because we evolved simultaneously together... bacteria and virus don't simply kill us outright due to our progressively strengthened immune systems, etc).
The plot is rehashed. The performances wooden (Nicolas Cage drank enough whiskey to drown the most stout alcoholic and then sprang into action on wakening with no hang over? Highly unlikely!). Yet, one cannot argue with success, as "Knowing" swept the box office. Perhaps it had more to do with the fact that once the audience knows about "Knowing" they will know to stay away. I know better now.