I totally paused!

Starring James Marsden, Lena Headey, & Kate Hudson

Good concept, not so great movie. It was actually not bad until we started getting to the point where everything becomes a big fat mess. At some point you start asking so many questions that you just can’t keep track of anything, and not in a good way. More like everything starts folding in and the movie gets too clever for itself.

Admittedly, I don’t like seeing James Marsden end up the bad guy. And for pre-google days, the character of Jones does a decent job of looking things up about what’s really going on. But everything just gets so convoluted you don’t know what to believe and what is fake. One could say that’s the point of the movie, but does this kind of movie *really* want to leave its intended audience confused?  You’re not going to pull the David Lynch crowd in with this one, so I can’t help but wonder what the writer and director hoped to accomplish.

It starts out as a not so bad look at what rumors and gossip can do to the lives of everyone involved, and I think does a good job of analyzing that up until the supposed even bigger truth happens.  I became curious as to how many rumors can you spread before it’s too late to go back?  It’s one thing when the rumor is that someone had sex at a party, then that they were passed out, and eventually that they were raped.

It’s another thing entirely when someone is supposed to be dead.  How do you come back from that?  You go to class the next day and you say “Sorry y’all, I was just kiddin’!”

I also wonder what exactly was the point of it all?  This many people get involved simply to teach one guy a lesson?  Sure, the rumor he allowed to be spread was vicious and the after effects were nasty, but did his life really deserve to be ruined?  Or is the argument that because the rumor caused two lives to be ruined, he should definitely have to have his too.

So basically, while the movie wrapped itself up nicely, I am confused as to why it had to go so bad.  I would much rather have been left wondering what really happened between Derrick and Naomi than to end the movie with him asking what people were going to think of him.  I know the solution to this problem – transfer to a different school!

See this movie if: I DVR’d this off some movie channel one day.  I guess if you happen to catch it on TV and you are otherwise totally bored, you can watch it and see if you’re as confused as I am.  Otherwise, it’s probably something worth skipping.  But we do get Kate Hudson before she turned into a total rom com queen!

My Rating: 2.5/5

Six Degrees of Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
Lena Headey was in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles with Summer Glau
Summer Glau was in Firefly with Nathan Fillion
Nathan Fillion was in season 7 of BTVS