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The Forgotten: Rightfully Over-looked

You can count The Forgotten among the movies I'm regularly skipping over when choosing something to watch; I've seen the trailers and read the plot summaries and never thought, "Hey! I can't wait to watch this movie."

It's not just the boring plot or the stupid trailer. It's actually Julianne Moore. She has so little range as an actress it's nearly laughable. She can play exactly one character; the hysterical woman. In most cases, including in The Forgotten, I wish she could be someone else. Only once, once! have I wanted her to be an emotional wreck, and she was amazing at it, and that was in Magnolia. Every other time I just wanted to reach into the movie and slap her until she got her shit together.

Actually, let's also consider the director: Joseph Ruben - best(?) known for directing The Good Son back in the 90's. I mean - it's not like he's really got a history of running around Hollywood, taking risks and turning out terrific movies for it. He's really just slinking around in the shadowy outskirts, grabbing up crappy scripts that are just poorly rehashed versions of more popular movies.

So, what I didn't realize about The Forgotten, until actually getting into it, is that it's just a less cool version of Dark City. (A movie that I love.) Alien beings hang out and mess with human minds, changing their past - present - future, just to see what happens. Nothing new here. Certainly no Oscar on the horizon for Ruben.

So that's what, 3 strikes against The Forgotten? Already out and I've still got more to write about.

After watching the movie - and in preparation for this blog - I did some research on the movie. Out of the gate, I had thought the movie had a strangely well-known, well-regarded cast for such a throw-away movie. I was surprised to learn that it did fairly well at the box office. I hardly even remember it being in theaters.

This got me thinking that it's maybe not completely the throw-away movie I initially believed it was. So I checked out some ratings. Here's what I expected to see; a 31% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Now that's more like it. Real people don't actually like this movie, just theatre-going suckers do.

I do have to give it to Ruben though - he did manage to craft one great moment in which I literally jumped off my damn couch. What can I say? I am human and those well-timed loud noises can affect me, too!

Alright - the wrap up goes something like this: I wasted 1.5 hours of my life watching this movie so that others (like yourselves) don't have to. Unless you're gluttons for movie punishment (like many of my friends actually are!) Then I've wasted my time for nothing.

...whatever.

Watch the trailer here:

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