Restart the Earth - Die grüne Flut

After almost every movie company continues to bank on remakes of remakes, here we get an original idea, and pretty well implemented! YES, there is still intelligent life on this planet.

And they actually did a real good job. OK, a few of the more tried and true, less original, plot devices were used (dad more worried about saving his daughter), but you have to expect a minor part of every script to do that (and hence not moving to a 7/8)

But lets get to the real things that matter. The acting is rather good. LOTs of CG, maybe a bit too much, but properly supports the storyline. The direction is well done and the script (my usual hot button) is better than fair, maybe even higher than. All in all, this is a production team that should keeping moving forward. You are on target ... unless you start doing remakes or sequels, and then I will not be as positive.

RUN AWAY AS FAST AS YOU CAN. Start with an obese comedic tech wize, add a little girl and lots of more than ridiculous characters and situations and what you get is unwatchable. Imagery is straight out ofthe lowest level Japanese films from the age of Godzilla and others. Plot is a joke, characters are also just PC representations. If you enjoyed this excuse for a movie, please go back to your second grade class and refrain from leaving any movie reviews. Movies worth viewing does not include this amatuer attempt to cinema in any way. Pass and go straight to the exit when this "film" enters your radar.

The plants turn against us? The film began in a tedious way. And of course, I knew the film would be about the man trying to survive with his little daughter, as plants growing beating hearts try to swallow them. It looked depressing, slow, annoying, and predictable. Seen on Tubi, the free streaming site, which now has live TV.

Well, what a movie.

Not exactly rife with deep philosophical under tones but if you check your brain in at the door and don't aim too high, you should not be overly disappointed.

The story itself is pretty straight forward and is not what I would call taxing. Plants, mad scientists buggering with things they shouldn't be, end of the world, yada, yada, yada.

The staging of the story was, well, nothing flash. The CQI and the set pieces were at best acceptable and at worse ordinary sometimes boarding on the laughable. For example, it was more than noticeable that as the characters were seen traversing the landscape between the high-rise buildings and the cars on the street in some scenes, the definition of the wider horizon of the landscape was decidedly flat in nature indicating an obvious green screen effect. It certainly screamed low budget.

The other part of the staging of the story, the actors, is a different kettle of fish. Some of the acting was fine, some of the acting was more than a little melodramatic and some was just horrible. Case in point on this, the gentleman who played the rotund science tech "21" (and the comedy foil) simply put couldn't act. This criticism maybe harsh though as I watched the Chinese language version with subtitles (I cannot watch dubbed movies) and a lot of his lines obviously lost a lot in translation.

Finally, the child.

This child should win the Oscar for being the single most unwarranted and annoying child character in any movie since Dakota Fanning played Rachel Ferrier in Steven Spielberg's 2005 War of the Worlds. Certainly, as the film progresses and the child becomes progressive more annoying you hope that the plants do the viewers a favor and eat her and by the end of the movie, you are left wondering if the father saved the right person....

As the movie goes, quite the mixed bag but I have seen worse so maybe 6 out of 10.

I'll mention the positive first:

• better than B level acting (but not better than A level)
• very good plotline (except for CCP typical 1 person sacrifices self for everyone alive)

Now some of the negatives:

• terrible script/lines
• terrible camera work
• even worse CGI.

Now, regarding my subject/head line: The idea of plants attacking humans (including the design of the plants' cannibalistic "heads") comes from the book/movie The Day Of The Triffids".

That old movie wasn't too bad.

This movie is slightly better than that black & white one.

But the book is better than both.

So the current "Featured Review" is wrong.

Mind you, they probably didn't know about that old book/movie.