Director : Phil Alden Robinson
Cast : Robin Williams, Mila Kunis, Peter Dinklage and James Earl Jones
Imagine you are told that you only have 90 minutes to live, how would you spend it? Well I certainly wouldn't waste it watching this movie again. After being diagnosed by a replacement doctor as only having 90 minutes to live, Henry (Williams) decides to spent the remainder of his life saying goodbye to his family, the only problem is that none of them like him.
Since the death of one of his two children a few years before hand, Henry (Williams) has alienated everyone in his life, and the only reason that Dr Gill (Kunis) is chasing him down to try and prevent disaster is because she lied about him having 90 minutes to live and feels a sense of guilt. So she's chasing him as he goes around trying to see his friends and family and is usually one step behind Henry as he finds out his wife is sleeping with the next door neighbour, he realises criticising his son's decision to work at a dance studio was wrong and his brother (Dinklage) misses the days when they used to be close.
What follows is one of the blandest films to be released in many years.
The title is misleading as the only times you see Henry angry before his diagnosis for a brain aneurysm is when he is hit by a taxi and then has to wait for more than two hours for his doctor to arrive for his hospital appointment, and yet the title suggests that it's highly unusual to get angry in these situations normally.
Infact, during the entire film you only see him get angry on three occasions, totaling maybe ninety seconds. An 83 minute film, take out five minutes for credits, leaving 78 minutes overall, and he's only angry for less than 2% of the film. There is no build up to the anger, you're just thrown in to this guy's life and are just expected to know that he's angry all the time without knowing why. This is made obvious from the first minute as the words uttered in the film comes as Henry lists all the things he hates, but again, everyone has a list of stuff that they hate. They expect is to think this guy is the angriest man in Brooklyn simply because he has a lot of things as gets angry when he is hit by another driver and has to wait for two hours to see a doctor? I'd get pissed off at that, hell, a Buddhist monk would get pissed off in that situation, so this guy isn't special and is just like 99% of people in the world.
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| Henry tries to buy a camera but does nothing but reaffirm he isn't a likeable person by mocking the seller's heavy stutter. |
Henry's family only learns about his condition after they reject his attempts to connect and they launch a desperate attempt to find him. If it takes him dying for them to think they will miss him, then it does make you wonder if it was worth it and whether the relationships would be stronger at the end of this ordeal, or whether things would eventually go back to the way they have been.
There is precisely sod all character development in his film, seriously, none, and what makes it worse is that you don't feel sorry for Henry, he's a bit of a dick. Whether it be threatening to deport a taxi driver by reporting him to the authorities to mocking a camera salesman with a severe stutter, you almost start to genuinely wish that Dr Gill was correct and that he only had 90 minutes to live.
The performances are dull and Williams puts in yet another performance where you wonder if he was actually trying. Can you actually remember the last film that Williams was in where he was actually any good, or played a likeable character? I know some people will say "what about Mrs Doubtfire?", well given that film is about a man who openly tries to film his soon-to-be divorced wife's new boyfriend, I would say that answer is no. Infact, I can't recall a film where he actually played a guy that was both likeable and didn't spend most of the film being an intolerable arse.
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| Henry (Williams) reflects on his relationship with his son as Dr Gill (Kunis) gets as bored as anyone watching the film |
Mila Kunis continues to be on her regular film, in other words being a terrible actress. I love her in the role as Meg in Family Guy and there's no denying she's definitely an attractive woman, but watching her act is painful due to that beautiful face being completely expressionless during each and every film she is in. In this film her character is supposedly very sad that her cat just jumped out of a 10th floor flat window, and but for all we know she could be absolutely delighted at it as there is no range in her acting ability. She was the same in "The Book of Eli" as well, bland, bland, bland.
*WARNING, THIS NEXT BIT CONTAINS A SPOILER, I WILL INDICATE WHEN SPOILER ENDS SO YOU CAN CONTINUE READING
For me the most painful scene to watch was right at the end. Henry did die afterall, eight days after the events of the majority of the film, and his family release his ashes into the river. They are confronted by a member of the ship's crew and they all start shouting at him in a way that they think Henry would have. They could have simply said that they were spreading ashes, but nope, they had to deliver this in a way that was exceptionally painful to watch.
*SPOILER FINISHED*
I would implore all of my friends and family to avoid this film at any cost. The trailer makes it look reasonable but it really, really isn't. Horrible, horrible film.
This film did have potential as it's an interesting concept, and one improvement would be for the film to last 90 minutes from the point that Henry is told he has 90 minutes to live, but the film as a whole doesn't last 90 minutes. With a better script, director and cast this film could have actually be very watchable and enjoyable, but alas, we were stuck with this rubbish.
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