Premonition Movie Review

Premonition

Starring: Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon, Shyann McClure, Courtney Taylor Burness

Directed by: Mennan Yapo

Rated: PG-13 for some violent content, disturbing images, thematic material and brief language.

110 minutes

It is my duty to provide not only reviews for my faithful readers, but hope. Therefore, for those who are anxiously awaiting the time when they too will see Premonition, expecting a good, suspenseful, mystereeous film that will tickle the mind and make the senses jump… well, to you, I say, I hope you go see something else.

Heh. Now be advised that I went to see this movie with my sister, and she enjoyed it. She declared, “I liked it,” in that peculiar, half-angry, half-amused, defensive kind of tone I begin to hear more frequently as I go see movies with other people. I don’t know why. I agree, and they agree, that we should all agree with me, right? I think so. Anyway. The point is that someone will like this movie besides my sister. The chances of pure blind coincidence mean at least one other person will. And who knows? You might be that one.

Here is a primer.

Get ready for really scary, suspenseful music that rises into a crescendo of pure apprehension, the kind that always tells you, the movie-goer, that something BIG is going to happen, something is going to JUMP out at you, by god, she is reaching a hand toward that man, who is going to turn around and he will BE A CORPSE!

Nope, not gonna happen. This is one of the most annoying parts about Premonition- the damn scary music that leads absolutely nowhere. What an extensive and exhausting tease.

Get ready for a twisty, turning plot, always jumping from one point to another, as crazy visions begin and Sandra Bullock starts have glimpses of the future. Get ready to figure them out, thread by thread, until- oh, no, wait… there is no figuring out in this movie.

Get ready for a startling climax that will make everything come together?

Oh… nope. Not that either, sorry.

Spoilers coming, but don’t worry, you don’t want to see this, so you are safe to read.

There was no point to this stupid movie. Yes, sure enough, Bullock’s character, an unhappy housewife who spends her days making extensive grocery lists, driving her daughters to school, and hangin’ up clothing on the lines in her yard to get that fresh air scent. Her husband is a distant man, his actions saying “affair” so loudly it is a wonder horns aren’t growing out of his head. Oh, but they both love their kids, two adorable little girls who never misbehave or act like anything but princesses for less than a second.

Before the actual movie-part of the movie started, we got a glimpse of (apparently) former happy times. Linda is being surprised by her then-loving husband, Jim. He has bought a house, look, there is a bow on the front door! She is stunned, and then delighted, throwing herself into his arms. Now if this wasn’t my first warning, I don’t know what was. What woman would be happy with her husband for going out and buying a house- a big house, by the way, with an equally big mortgage I am sure, without consulting her? What woman wants to live in a house that her husband has picked out? Is this the kind of surprise we wives love? Nuh-uh, it is NOT.

Now suddenly, interspersed with chatting on the phone with her friend, jogging, and smoking the occasional cigarette that clearly represents her unhappiness with life, Linda starts to wake up on, shall we say, the wrong side of the wrong bed of wrongness in wrongland? She lives through the day that she is told Jim is dead. Then boom- she wakes up and he is next to her. Huh? Mysteriously enough, the next day she wakes up and it’s the day of Jim’s funeral, when she goes stomping up to demand they open the casket and oops- her hubby’s head just bounced on her shoe. Which I am sure happens all the time- there would be no point in sewing his head back on, now would there? I think that is perfectly reasonable- that the funeral folks would just toss the pieces in the box- the easily broken, easily-opening-lidded box, and head to the church. Right?

Wait a sec- now it the next morning and she is back in her normal life again…but starting to act a little weird. Is this because of those half-dissolved lithium pills prescribed to her, by a doctor she doesn’t know, only god knows when? Eeek! The mystery is piling up! Of course, later we will get to live the day when she does go to this doctor and he prescribes the pills for her. This is another totally realistic part of the movie. I am sure that doctors meet with perfect strangers who walk in off the street all the time, listen to them tell a story of seeing the future where the doc has prescribed them lithium, and then- write them a prescription for lithium. Of course, it happens all the time!

Maybe I am nitpicking. But there is no doubt about the fact that this movie meanders and turns without going anywhere. Does she love the husband or not? Does she want him to die, because he is cheating on her with Amber Valletta? I will say this- if you want to see how eminently unattractive Amber looks without makeup and her eyes all red and puffy- go see this, you will leave happy. Otherwise, you might die of eye-rolling. I know I almost did. The only thing keeping me alive was the thought that if I did die of it, the funeral home peeps would just like, toss my eyes in on top of me in my casket, and then it might just like, accidentally get dropped on my husband’s foot, and my eyes might roll out and look up at him. And even if he was cheating on me with Amber Valletta, I would not wish that on anyone.

I give it 2 &s....

& it had great suspenseful music

& no one fell over their own feet while acting their way out of the paperbag