2/5 I should have had a premonition before I wasted my money
  by Stanwyck (Texas)
I'm a big Sandra Bullock fan, but she's let me down more than once- SPEED 2 comes to mind, and this movie too.

I have to admit that she didn't have much to work with, but she produced this turkey, so she has no excuse.

There is really nothing going for this film, even the rip-off of Phillip Glass' FACADES score. The plot is confused, meant to be so as to build suspense, but there is really no suspense, and by the time the movie ends you've figured it out and don't really care.

Sandra, and you, can do better.



2/5 United We Fall
  by mark twain (Monrovia, Liberia)
I watched this film tonight. At least I think it was tonight. But instead maybe I had a dream I watched the film, but won't actually watch it until Wednesday night. In any case, blame it on the roses, blame it on the wind but I'm not sure I completely followed what all was going on. Spoilers ahoy. Read on if you've already seen the movie.

As far as I can gather, there seem to have been multiple possible histories competing with one another for actuality. In one possible history, Sandra Bullock is estranged from her husband and they have a crumbling loveless marriage, though he does wind up falling all over himself to give her some head.

In another possible history, which seems not actually to have occurred, a sinister psychiatrist is drugging Bullock with... Lithium? Did the screenwriter research this at all? Lithium is not an antipsychotic, nor is it very widely prescribed for people whose heads are coming apart so bad they don't know whether they're Hall or Oates. But Lithium, nevertheless, is most sinisterly prescribed. I think the same shrink may have sinisterly suggested magnesium supplements as well, in a vaguely suspicious barely concealed French-Canadian accent no less. Ah well. But it was not to be, apparently. Nor was it quite to be that Bullock gets popped into the loony bin for slicing her daughter's face up.

However the film-makers do at least supply a blooper reel featuring an assortment of mystics culled from the north of Britain ("I sez to me Harry, I sez, Don't let's tonight... it gives me a rum go. An' that seam night the pub caeved in on isself, teakin' the souls of thirty football supporters down wi' er."; "Yar... I seen 'im: the Loch Ness Monster, sure as'm standin' 'ere!"; "I seen the trein go off the rails, real bloody-like, joos like it duz in me bleedin' paintin's.")

But getting back to the movie, in the end, it does seem to have seemingly come to pass that hubby gets a bionic haircut from a jack-knifing gasoline truck... though one can't be fully sure this really happened. After all, the movie in its entirety could have been a bad dream that the viewer... I mean Bullock, yes, Bullock, had and was now in the process of being disabused of as she walks out of the theater... I mean prepares to sell the house her husband bought with that raise he got for being promoted at whatever company he worked for selling whatever it was he sold. It does indeed seem that the house her husband bought for her didn't bring them much happiness, and the poignancy of the movie resides in this subtext of family life gone awry and no possibility of touching those we hold dear.

5/5 Very Good
  by David A. Smith (Webberville, Mi, USA)
this is a very good movie sandra bullock is awesome in this movie. i love this movie and so will you. I recommend this movie to everyone

5/5 great movie
  by L. Bearinger
sandra does a great job in this movie like some of her other movies. i like it i felt a little sad at the end on what happen.

2/5 Too Sad, Too Slow, With Fuzzy Slippers
  by S. P. Miskowski (West Coast, US)
Directed by Mennan Yapo
Written by Bill Kelly

Linda and Jim lead a perfect life. They live in an impossibly pretty house in the quietest and most picturesque suburb ever invented by Hollywood. They have two adorable daughters. And somehow Jim earns enough money to allow Linda a full-time mommy career without money worries.

The film begins with a tragedy. Linda wakes up and goes about her daily routine, expecting Jim to return from his latest business trip later in the day. She is stunned when a police officer knocks at her door and announces that her husband has been killed in an auto accident.

Linda copes, mainly by giving in to shock. She breaks the terrible news to her kids and asks her mother to stay with the family for a while. Tentatively, the women begin to talk about funeral plans.

The next day Linda wakes up, and cannot find her mother in the house. She goes to the kitchen and finds her husband drinking coffee, preparing for his business trip.

From this point on, the film unfolds in a series of events and possibilities. With each possibility, Linda must re-evaluate her feelings about her husband, the state of their marriage, and the kind of person she is. All of this plays a vital part in unraveling the mystery of her premonition or apprehension of her husband's impending accident. With each step, Linda feels more certain that she can change what is to be. But does she want to?

The producers of Premonition would be justified in wondering why their stab at the New Hollywood Quasi-Horror Genre was not a chart-busting hit. After all, they built in all the requisites:

* likable star (Bullock)
* a fixable family conflict
* something spooky messin' w/ likable star's mind
* complex narrative structure to impress viewers who can't follow it and flatter those who can
* big and accessible message about Life

Unfortunately this story is a bit too clever for its own good. But it isn't ruined by cleverness. It is ruined by sentiment. Cut the unintentionally hilarious funeral scene, a heavy dose of religion supplemented by a family vitamin, and a moment near the end in which Sandra Bullock shouts a phrase one too many times while barreling down the street, limbs Dave Attell-style-akimbo in fuzzy robe and slippers--and this thing might have worked.

But the producers didn't cut these things. Which means they didn't find them as funny as they obviously are. And when you don't know that your operatic funeral scene is guaranteed to elicit belly laughs, you probably shouldn't be dabbling in the New Hollywood Quasi-Horror Genre. Because this kind of film flies or dies on the ability of its creators to recognize humor when it slaps them on the back of the head.

In this regard the creators of Premonition don't seem to have a clue. Their story is so dour, and Linda is so sad, and the kids are so good and precious, and the setting is so perfect, it's borderline daytime TV material. There are no truly ironic or sardonic moments in the script. The characters don't share anything offbeat or charming that might win us over and make us want them to stay together. They're a typical, slightly disillusioned couple with no quirks or aspirations.

At one point the story seems about to get darker and weirder, when Linda appears to be responsible for a child's injury. But this line isn't pursued very far, and we're soon returned to the land of the impossibly pretty suburb of dreams. By the last, sappy scene, I just didn't care any more.