Seldom does one see a film so awful. Even Baby Geniuses wasn't this bad. Duchovny's comic timing is terrible, and the witty repartee that one normally finds in buddy movies such as this is completely lacking between Duchovny and Orlando Jones; it's absolutely amazing, watch this movie and you'll see that there is zero chemistry between the main characters. I wonder if this was deliberate.
Here's one reason this movie doesn't make any sense: a meteor crashes to earth and a community college instructor and his buddy discover that life is evolving from the meteor. So now that the most astounding scientific discovery in thousands of years has happened right under their noses, what happens? They casually go about their normal routine, taking students on a field trip to visit the meteor, sitting around chatting, basically ignorant of the miracle that is happening under their very noses. It's so stupid, it just wouldn't happen like this unless the main characters were made out to be stupid in the first place, but Reitman doesn't take this angle. He plays it seriously like a black comedy, but then pulls out something stupid like the golf course dude falling asleep at his fireman exam. The characters aren't well defined at all. Why should I care about any of them, Reitman doesn't take the time to flesh them out, he seems to be ridiculing their superficiality while simultaneously starving them of the witty dialogue necessary to pull off a black comedy. The result is a mishmash of facial expressions and clichés mined from one hundred years of comedy and vaudeville, all thrown together in an attempt to get something to stick. It's like taking everything in your refrigerator and mixing it all together and hoping it will taste good.
It doesn't.
I'll echo the sentiments of another reviewer who said the film lost him when they were taking the mosquito thing out of Jones. If that isn't bad enough, Jones hops up and threatens the doctor never to do that again. So? Next time the doctor will just leave the insect inside of him? This movie is painfully stupid.
Here's one reason this movie doesn't make any sense: a meteor crashes to earth and a community college instructor and his buddy discover that life is evolving from the meteor. So now that the most astounding scientific discovery in thousands of years has happened right under their noses, what happens? They casually go about their normal routine, taking students on a field trip to visit the meteor, sitting around chatting, basically ignorant of the miracle that is happening under their very noses. It's so stupid, it just wouldn't happen like this unless the main characters were made out to be stupid in the first place, but Reitman doesn't take this angle. He plays it seriously like a black comedy, but then pulls out something stupid like the golf course dude falling asleep at his fireman exam. The characters aren't well defined at all. Why should I care about any of them, Reitman doesn't take the time to flesh them out, he seems to be ridiculing their superficiality while simultaneously starving them of the witty dialogue necessary to pull off a black comedy. The result is a mishmash of facial expressions and clichés mined from one hundred years of comedy and vaudeville, all thrown together in an attempt to get something to stick. It's like taking everything in your refrigerator and mixing it all together and hoping it will taste good.
It doesn't.
I'll echo the sentiments of another reviewer who said the film lost him when they were taking the mosquito thing out of Jones. If that isn't bad enough, Jones hops up and threatens the doctor never to do that again. So? Next time the doctor will just leave the insect inside of him? This movie is painfully stupid.