Coyote Blog

John Scalzi, via Instapundit

A producer of Creation, the film about Charles Darwin and his wife Emma, starring Paul Bettany and his real-life wife Jennifer Connelly, is griping that the film has no distributor in the US, apparently because so many Americans are evolution-hating mouth-breathers that no one wants the touch the thing; it's just too darn controversial.

Well, it may be that. Alternately, and leaving aside any discussion of the actual quality of the film, it may be that a quiet story about the difficult relationship between an increasingly agnostic 19th Century British scientist and his increasingly devout wife, thrown into sharp relief by the death of their beloved 10-year-old daughter, performed by mid-list stars, is not exactly the sort of film that's going to draw in a huge winter holiday crowd, regardless of whether that scientist happens to be Darwin or not, and that these facts are rather more pertinent, from a potential distributor's point of view. . . . Maybe if Charles Darwin were played by Will Smith, was a gun-toting robot sent back from the future to learn how to love, and to kill the crap out of the alien baby eaters cleverly disguised as Galapagos tortoises, and then some way were contrived for Jennifer Connelly to expose her breasts to RoboDarwin two-thirds of the way through the film, and there were explosions and lasers and stunt men flying 150 feet into the air, then we might be talking wide-release from a modern major studio. Otherwise, you know, not so much. The "oh, it's too controversial for Americans" comment is, I suspect, a bit of face-saving rationalization from a producer

If you think Scalzi is exaggerating, sit and actually write down a synopsis of the plot for "Transformers" and see if you get anything that makes any more sense - just substitute "Jennifer Connelly's bare breasts" with "Megan Fox's bare midriff."

The original was a sort of surprise -- one expected a movie based on a toy franchise to suck, but it was actually OK.  It had a bit of wit, probably Spielberg's influence.  The new movie is not nearly as good.  I give it about 2.5 stars, with that being an average of 1.5 stars when Megan Fox is off the screen and 5 stars when she is on the screen.   The director avoids doing anything to advance the plot when she is on the screen, which is good because it is hard to concentrate during those moments.

The one highlight for me was that most of the college scenes were filmed at my old alma mater Princeton.  With all due appologies to my friends, there is a certain amount of cognitive dissonance to seeing 40 or 50 consistently smoking hot college girls wandering around the Princeton campus.  We had a name for women like that when I was there -- we called them "visitors."

One bit of credit -- unlike a lot action movie sequels, the plot was mostly coherant.   The humor was strained, more sophomoric and less witty than the original.  Thedogs having sex in the beginning was gratuitous, for example.

Anyway, my kids enjoyed it, and it was a decent way to spend a summer afternoon when it was 107 outside.  Air conditioning always adds at least 1 star to every movie during a Phoenix summer.