Full disclosure: I hate Ayn Rand and all she stands for.
That out of the way, and that aside (I will get back to that in a moment), this was an incredible stinker of a movie. The acting was horrible. The choice of actors was horrible. The production values on any HBO series would trounce this movie 10 times over. The plot meandered, and then the movie was over. 2 hours of my life wasted and nothing was very different than when it started.
The plot? Oh boy, where to start: it could not have been more contrived. If you had started with "well first thing is, a cow jumps over the moon" ... that premise might actually have some merit. SPOILERS AHEAD: The movie has an anti-climax about half way through, where the guy you keep expecting to be recruited by John Galt, Hank Reardon, is tried in court and in the same breath the judge dismisses his whole verdict in a jingoistic, snarky, diatribe about how they can't let "the job creators win." Literally, this movie could not have been more neo-con ra-ra cheerleading if it tried. Faux News broadcasters literally showed up in this movie to plug it. I could go on for hours, but I don't want to bore you the way this movie bored me-- it's would be a crime against humanity.
I could not sit through Ayn Rands books, she was an awful writer. However, I wanted to watch this movie to try and grasp what it was all about more than excerpts had done. Nothing in this movie gave me any idea. I watched the first installment, and begrudgingly, it was a tolerable narrative; coherent. This garbage? Wow. The term 80's B movie kept springing to mind. The zany plot twists and changes were so ridiculous and rife that you would think they would start with "first the cow jumped over the moon, and THEN..." You would stop listening after the first sentence of that joke...
The government in this movie is reduced to a simpering 80's villain from the A-Team (or something lame like that) where they inexplicably start seizing assets and making rules and doing all kinds of insane things for no reason. Things or stated, rather than shown, no exposition involved. The plot is flat on the face of it, no attempt to make logical progression or sense. Given that almost nothing happened in the movie, it is amazing it took 2 hours. And when it ended the way it did, very sci-fi indeed, no explanation, no realism: (spoiler) she goes through a pseudo-worm whole, in a plane she bought on the spot, learned to fly on the spot, from a guy just hanging out down the road... crashes said plane after somehow successfully piloting it for a few minutes, goes through the worm hole, crashes in spectacular fashion (cue digital effects), plane is disintegrated, except for the tail and nose. She emerges barely harmed, and lo, within seconds, dozens of town people are gathered around as if they had "caught her" from falling from the sky (I mean seriously, they were just THERE!) John Galt (whose name is thrown around like a random word throughout the movie, literally in places it should not be as if it were a replacement for the word "of" in sentences)... John Galt is there hand outstretched to pull her from the rubble as though he were John the Baptist pulling Jesus from the water in "King of Kings." That was just the silliness in the last 3 minutes, to give you an idea. Silly is OK, if it is the tongue in cheek, Evil Dead sort of thing... but this? Oh my lord was it garbage.
I have never written a review for a movie before, and I have been on IMDb a VERY long time (1997)... this was awful. I could go on about the pseudophilosophy or Rand, but suffice is to say, I don't need to. This movie was just horrible. At least movies like "Plan 9" were FUNNY-bad! As a movie aficionado, this was some of the worst I have ever seen. The rushed plot and wacky progression reminded me of nearly every episode of "Sliders" where the premise seems so "yeah, what if THIS happened!" and crashes in an utterly implausible, stupid, horrible plot that leaves you wondering: was that a cow that just flew over the moon, or did I just waste 2 hours of my life, plus 15 minutes to write a review of this stinker. Yup, that actually happened.
That out of the way, and that aside (I will get back to that in a moment), this was an incredible stinker of a movie. The acting was horrible. The choice of actors was horrible. The production values on any HBO series would trounce this movie 10 times over. The plot meandered, and then the movie was over. 2 hours of my life wasted and nothing was very different than when it started.
The plot? Oh boy, where to start: it could not have been more contrived. If you had started with "well first thing is, a cow jumps over the moon" ... that premise might actually have some merit. SPOILERS AHEAD: The movie has an anti-climax about half way through, where the guy you keep expecting to be recruited by John Galt, Hank Reardon, is tried in court and in the same breath the judge dismisses his whole verdict in a jingoistic, snarky, diatribe about how they can't let "the job creators win." Literally, this movie could not have been more neo-con ra-ra cheerleading if it tried. Faux News broadcasters literally showed up in this movie to plug it. I could go on for hours, but I don't want to bore you the way this movie bored me-- it's would be a crime against humanity.
I could not sit through Ayn Rands books, she was an awful writer. However, I wanted to watch this movie to try and grasp what it was all about more than excerpts had done. Nothing in this movie gave me any idea. I watched the first installment, and begrudgingly, it was a tolerable narrative; coherent. This garbage? Wow. The term 80's B movie kept springing to mind. The zany plot twists and changes were so ridiculous and rife that you would think they would start with "first the cow jumped over the moon, and THEN..." You would stop listening after the first sentence of that joke...
The government in this movie is reduced to a simpering 80's villain from the A-Team (or something lame like that) where they inexplicably start seizing assets and making rules and doing all kinds of insane things for no reason. Things or stated, rather than shown, no exposition involved. The plot is flat on the face of it, no attempt to make logical progression or sense. Given that almost nothing happened in the movie, it is amazing it took 2 hours. And when it ended the way it did, very sci-fi indeed, no explanation, no realism: (spoiler) she goes through a pseudo-worm whole, in a plane she bought on the spot, learned to fly on the spot, from a guy just hanging out down the road... crashes said plane after somehow successfully piloting it for a few minutes, goes through the worm hole, crashes in spectacular fashion (cue digital effects), plane is disintegrated, except for the tail and nose. She emerges barely harmed, and lo, within seconds, dozens of town people are gathered around as if they had "caught her" from falling from the sky (I mean seriously, they were just THERE!) John Galt (whose name is thrown around like a random word throughout the movie, literally in places it should not be as if it were a replacement for the word "of" in sentences)... John Galt is there hand outstretched to pull her from the rubble as though he were John the Baptist pulling Jesus from the water in "King of Kings." That was just the silliness in the last 3 minutes, to give you an idea. Silly is OK, if it is the tongue in cheek, Evil Dead sort of thing... but this? Oh my lord was it garbage.
I have never written a review for a movie before, and I have been on IMDb a VERY long time (1997)... this was awful. I could go on about the pseudophilosophy or Rand, but suffice is to say, I don't need to. This movie was just horrible. At least movies like "Plan 9" were FUNNY-bad! As a movie aficionado, this was some of the worst I have ever seen. The rushed plot and wacky progression reminded me of nearly every episode of "Sliders" where the premise seems so "yeah, what if THIS happened!" and crashes in an utterly implausible, stupid, horrible plot that leaves you wondering: was that a cow that just flew over the moon, or did I just waste 2 hours of my life, plus 15 minutes to write a review of this stinker. Yup, that actually happened.