adminHurt, Spencer Harle.
Director: Andrew Nicolle
Running Time: 122 minutes
Type of film: Extra-terrestrial fantasy
Age restriction: 16
Cinema: Eastgate
Reviewed by Professor Joel White
WHEN Shakespeare gave to Hamlet the line of dialogue “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt in your philosophy,” he might well have been anticipating that, one day, a film would be made that would fully justify his prediction.
Completely befuddled, the Tuesday half-price audience, large in number but admittedly lacking in comprehension, sat through a film which demanded that full attention – plus the ability to read minds might well be an asset. The film comes with a perfectly predictable pedigree: Its author, Stephanie Meyer, let it be known that she would “take no prisoners” when she unleashed upon an unsuspecting public her earlier opus, “The Twilight Saga”. We are in rural America, the time the present. We are given to understand that the planet earth and particularly this one country has been pursuing a course of action which contradicts the intentions which the extra-terrestrials have envisioned for it.
A messenger a young woman named Melanie, with the name-change of Wanda upon earth, comes to earth to study and then report on the ways in which these terrestrials can best be convinced of their need for change.
Of course, this being Hollywood the young visitor, who has taken many light years albeit travelling at the speed of light, is a blonde beauty and cannot prevent herself from falling in love with a mere earthling, who is, in fact, centuries younger than she.
In fact, the time element with which we are dealing is spelled out for us in one scene.
Explaining that if she were to return home it would be the great-great-grandchildren of those she left behind on earth who would see her upon her return. Very surprising but perhaps done intentionally to emphasise the enormous differences between the extra-terrestrial visitor and her stupefied hosts virtually all the scenes on earth are set in rural country regions. For a farmer who would like to see wheat fields which stretch as far as the eye cannot see, here is the chance. As an American, but ignorant of my birth country except for its major cities, I was agog at just how rural it actually is.
Online Reporter