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Nothing spruces up a lifeless "thriller" like a truckload of randomly inserted musical cues geared to jolt the easily jolted. Remove all of these childish little tricks and you're left with a movie that's more Lifetime drama than any sort of compelling horror movie. On top of that, Godsend is dull, draggy, slow and periodically quite inane.

Godsend showcases three hard-working actors doing the best they can with a shamelessly underwritten screenplay; it offers a hot-button premise without following through on an actual plot; it's hopelessly predictable, consistently uninteresting and almost entirely worthless.

Here's a clear indication of how much artistry and sincere effort went into the creation of this particular piece of motion picture art: Director Nick Hamm reportedly lensed more than four alternate endings, so he'd have all his bases covered after the market testing audiences had their say. Classy, eh?

Hoping to create some sort of buzz by exploiting the controversial issue of human cloning, Godsend delivers its salvo of stupidity via the following one-note narrative: A young couple loses their 8-year-old son in a car crash before a clearly insane scientist approaches them and promises an all-new (yet completely identical) child. But first the couple must move to a secluded little town, cut all ties with friends and family, and trust a clearly insane scientist with the life of their cloned little fetus.

As the insane scientist we have...no, not Christopher Lloyd or even Steve Buscemi. No, here we have Robert De Niro forced to spout some of the silliest dialogue of his entire career. Most uproarious is a scene in which our God-Playing Physician is left to mull around his office while clutching and rotating a pair of steel balls in his hand. It's tough to tell what's more unintetionally amusing, the stilted dialogue or the insipid symbolism. But De Niro is clearly not having a great time as he plays with his balls.

Obviously they both jump at the chance. This is how we know that Godsend is a movie; the characters do things that normal people would never do. And it's at this point that Godsend veers completely off the tracks and becomes as listlessly dull as it is outrageously stupid. One is tempted to dismiss this one as a fifth-generation Omen ripoff, but that might give you the idea that Godsend has A) atmosphere, B) intensity or C) a body count. And it so plainly does not.

Barring a better-than-the-movie-deserves performance from Greg Kinnear and Nick Hamm's handsome directorial flourishes, Godsend is absolutely one of the most dreary, downbeat and paint-by-numbers sci-fi thrillers you're likely to come across. The 'surprise' ending is a total cheat, as it devalues everything the film has told us for its first 70-some minutes, yet that won't prevent you from predicting the finale with little effort.

Aims for topicality and instead settles for inert and omnipresent banality. Aside from the few unintentional chuckles sprinkled throughout the overwrought proceedings, there's nothing here that's even remotely fascinating, exciting or scary. And that includes the three dozen Fake Scares that are peppered around the whole tired affair.

link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=9282&reviewer=128
originally posted: 05/01/04 13:28:43
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