The Fountain Review

 “The Fountain of crap.”

 Trailers are designed to look cool to get viewers into the seats, this is a fact.  I buy into that fact often.  Sometimes I’m dissapointed, sometimes I’m not.  It’s the gauntlet run by anybody who watches movies in the theater as a hobby/activity.  I find that I’m rarely so dissapointed by a movie after being excited or interested so much as to want to leave the movie.  Ladies and gentlemen, it has really happened in a bad way here.

Before I begin this review, let me say this: In some of my earlier reviews, some movies got off the hook big time.  The Lake House and POTC2 definetely caught me in a weird state of mind.  These are movies though that I wouldn’t mind watching again, but still are not very good.  I do judge replay value on movies.  I understand that The Fountain went through some sort of production hell.  I understand that Darren Aronofsky, the brilliant film-maker behind Requiem for a Dream and Pi, was really drained upon making this film.  I can only imagine how frustrated he was.  He sought to make a movie and it blew up in his face once, only to have to come back and make a semblance of a movie he really wanted to make.  And man, did his anguish really show.

I apologized to my girlfriend 15 minutes through this borefest.  She then apologized to my sisters and their friend for me.  I felt bad subjecting them to this experience.  It was a very dull experience.  I’ve never wanted to get away from a movie in recent memory as bad as this.  I wanted it to end.  This is how I saw it: it looked like a student film that benefited from a good amount of money and special effects.  That isn’t to say visually that the movie was sub-par; on the contrary.  It was really well done visually.  Aronofsky’s visual abilities are certainly on point, but his story-telling methods are pretty boring.

I felt very bored throughout this whole movie.  A movie has to be more than dialogue and relationships.  There has to be some sort of current and energy that brings the two together.  I read another review, specifically from EW who really liked it, saying it was a “mood movie”.  “Mood movies” therefore aren’t good movies.  I should never have to be in a particular mood to enjoy something.  A movie if it is good has a withstanding hold on my emotions throughout the story.  This movie felt jumpy and ill-contrived.  I feel bad for Aronofsky to have not been able to make the movie he initially sought to make, but not for boring me with whatever he salvaged.  Jackman and Weisz are obviously good, but even preformances don’t save me from this junky love story.

I can’t give this a good grade.  Maybe that makes me an action junky or a fan boy, in that I only give movies with guns and actions good grades as it seems, but this movie didn’t connect with me.  It really seperates the viewer from the experience.  While it offers a “figure it out for yourself” ending, I couldn’t have cared less. Maybe seeing it again will change my mind, but even then…I shouldn’t have to see something twice to like it.  I give this a Bones Report low of 3 out of 10 Bones, for really junky story-telling and shoddy attempts at giving the audience a chance to really relate.

RATING: