OK, here's the positive: sometimes it's fun to get good and incensed about how awful a movie is. This is that movie.
In short: pathetic writing, laughable dialogue, blatantly terrible editing, clumsy construction and acting so bad it's not even up to Razzie standards. Yeah. That bad. Many other reviewers have pointed out flawed lighting and sound as well as low production values. Those elements didn't particularly bother me, but to be honest I usually don't pay much attention to that kind of thing. The one exception: I spent the first 15 minutes trying not to be continually distracted by what appeared to be a shiny bead of mucus hanging from Baldwin's nose and thinking, when is he going to notice that and wipe it away?? But it turned out to be a tiny nose ring, which better lighting and cinematography could have identified much more clearly right off the bat.
I wanted to like this movie. I tried. Knowing only the title and the most basic plot outline, I was hoping for some truly intelligent writing and dialogue -- since, after all, these people are supposed to be geniuses. I am so, so disappointed. There were moments when I almost thought I saw one of the actors trying to suppress their own inner voice clamoring about how stupid this dialogue was. These people are all supposed to have IQ's over 200 and yet the writing is barely over 100. I could go on for days about the holes in the story, the holes in the characters' dialogue and logic, the holes in the flow of ideas... the only good thing about this film is the premise, but it completely and utterly fails to live up to the ideas it purports to present. There were many times when I wanted to jump in and yell an appropriate response to some question that supposedly stymied this group of the "best minds in the country" -- how is a viewer supposed to accept that none of these geniuses could come up with a reasonable argument when it isn't stumping the audience even for a heartbeat? And I'm not just talking about the grade-school level riddles, either, which are laughable. What arguments the characters do present are so tragically flawed the viewer can't even get carried along on the emotion train -- they'll be too busy rolling their eyes.
The film eventually gets around to its ultimate purpose when the question of the existence of God finally comes up -- but unfortunately, instead of a stimulating debate with intelligent questions and rejoinders from both sides, we are treated to the same old flawed arguments you can find on any internet forum, and which are full of holes any one with a bit of sense would be able to drive a truck through. Do the geniuses point out these flaws and errors in logic? Nope, they just collapse into stymied silence. Because the movie itself doesn't actually want to search for the truth -- they only want you to look at the filmmakers' version of the truth. OK, if belief in God is the story you want to tell, that's fine -- but don't do it in such a way that even Christian apologists would disown you for your idiocy.
The psychopath in charge of this whole charade jumps from question to question without any discernible reasoning and awards points for answers in a completely arbitrary manner (which I can sort of understand since the very nature of a psychopath means their behavior is bound to be somewhat bizarre). The problem is, the movie makers should have understood the effect this would have on the viewer: we completely lose interest in the points system because it can't be predicted in any way. And the geniuses don't seem to object to this arbitrariness at all. I kept hoping one of them would be smart enough to call out this psychopath on all of his BS, but alas.... bad writing strikes again. And the viewer is left out in the cold.
Some of the acting is OK. Much of it is really, really not. I buy Sizemore as the bad guy, and I appreciate that his character even has some humanity beneath the black hole of his psychopathic rage. I even buy Baldwin as the disillusioned pizza guy whose genius has already brought him so deeply into cynicism that he doesn't even see the point of making anything more of his life. Baldwin's performance is pretty bland, but it's at least believably bland. But some of the other actors... oy. Particularly bad is Huntley Ritter, whose "schmacting" just made me want to bang my head on the wall. It makes me sad to say this, but I've seen more believability from high school productions.
Editing: also bad. Between scenes, short clips are occasionally inserted where absolutely nothing happens: like a meaningless, emotionless shot of, what was it? Could have been a man tying his shoelace -- I can't even remember, because the shot did absolutely nothing to move the story along and it made me think, what in the world was that? It honestly looked like something they had marked for the cutting room floor but actually forgot to delete. That happened more than once. The flow of the story is discordant: moments for which you would expect some kind of resolution get cut short and you're abruptly yanked into the next scene without any kind of aesthetic grace.
The only part of this movie's message that made any sense to me is the idea that until we, as individuals, look at our true selves first and learn to forgive people who have hurt us, the world's problems will never get better. That much, at least, is true in my opinion. So I guess the task that lies ahead for me is learning to forgive the filmmakers for this piece of sludgy, ill-written, ill-presented propaganda-ist schlock.
In short: pathetic writing, laughable dialogue, blatantly terrible editing, clumsy construction and acting so bad it's not even up to Razzie standards. Yeah. That bad. Many other reviewers have pointed out flawed lighting and sound as well as low production values. Those elements didn't particularly bother me, but to be honest I usually don't pay much attention to that kind of thing. The one exception: I spent the first 15 minutes trying not to be continually distracted by what appeared to be a shiny bead of mucus hanging from Baldwin's nose and thinking, when is he going to notice that and wipe it away?? But it turned out to be a tiny nose ring, which better lighting and cinematography could have identified much more clearly right off the bat.
I wanted to like this movie. I tried. Knowing only the title and the most basic plot outline, I was hoping for some truly intelligent writing and dialogue -- since, after all, these people are supposed to be geniuses. I am so, so disappointed. There were moments when I almost thought I saw one of the actors trying to suppress their own inner voice clamoring about how stupid this dialogue was. These people are all supposed to have IQ's over 200 and yet the writing is barely over 100. I could go on for days about the holes in the story, the holes in the characters' dialogue and logic, the holes in the flow of ideas... the only good thing about this film is the premise, but it completely and utterly fails to live up to the ideas it purports to present. There were many times when I wanted to jump in and yell an appropriate response to some question that supposedly stymied this group of the "best minds in the country" -- how is a viewer supposed to accept that none of these geniuses could come up with a reasonable argument when it isn't stumping the audience even for a heartbeat? And I'm not just talking about the grade-school level riddles, either, which are laughable. What arguments the characters do present are so tragically flawed the viewer can't even get carried along on the emotion train -- they'll be too busy rolling their eyes.
The film eventually gets around to its ultimate purpose when the question of the existence of God finally comes up -- but unfortunately, instead of a stimulating debate with intelligent questions and rejoinders from both sides, we are treated to the same old flawed arguments you can find on any internet forum, and which are full of holes any one with a bit of sense would be able to drive a truck through. Do the geniuses point out these flaws and errors in logic? Nope, they just collapse into stymied silence. Because the movie itself doesn't actually want to search for the truth -- they only want you to look at the filmmakers' version of the truth. OK, if belief in God is the story you want to tell, that's fine -- but don't do it in such a way that even Christian apologists would disown you for your idiocy.
The psychopath in charge of this whole charade jumps from question to question without any discernible reasoning and awards points for answers in a completely arbitrary manner (which I can sort of understand since the very nature of a psychopath means their behavior is bound to be somewhat bizarre). The problem is, the movie makers should have understood the effect this would have on the viewer: we completely lose interest in the points system because it can't be predicted in any way. And the geniuses don't seem to object to this arbitrariness at all. I kept hoping one of them would be smart enough to call out this psychopath on all of his BS, but alas.... bad writing strikes again. And the viewer is left out in the cold.
Some of the acting is OK. Much of it is really, really not. I buy Sizemore as the bad guy, and I appreciate that his character even has some humanity beneath the black hole of his psychopathic rage. I even buy Baldwin as the disillusioned pizza guy whose genius has already brought him so deeply into cynicism that he doesn't even see the point of making anything more of his life. Baldwin's performance is pretty bland, but it's at least believably bland. But some of the other actors... oy. Particularly bad is Huntley Ritter, whose "schmacting" just made me want to bang my head on the wall. It makes me sad to say this, but I've seen more believability from high school productions.
Editing: also bad. Between scenes, short clips are occasionally inserted where absolutely nothing happens: like a meaningless, emotionless shot of, what was it? Could have been a man tying his shoelace -- I can't even remember, because the shot did absolutely nothing to move the story along and it made me think, what in the world was that? It honestly looked like something they had marked for the cutting room floor but actually forgot to delete. That happened more than once. The flow of the story is discordant: moments for which you would expect some kind of resolution get cut short and you're abruptly yanked into the next scene without any kind of aesthetic grace.
The only part of this movie's message that made any sense to me is the idea that until we, as individuals, look at our true selves first and learn to forgive people who have hurt us, the world's problems will never get better. That much, at least, is true in my opinion. So I guess the task that lies ahead for me is learning to forgive the filmmakers for this piece of sludgy, ill-written, ill-presented propaganda-ist schlock.