MOVIE REVIEW
“Left Behind”
Grade: D
Starring Nicolas Cage, Lea Thompson and Cassie Thomson. Directed by Vic Armstrong.
Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements, violence/peril and brief drug content. Check listings for theaters. 2 hours, 30 minutes.
Bottom line: The deliverance of the message leaves little energy for characters, plot and dialogue
By Michael Ordoña
San Francisco Chronicle
Ah, the Rapture. It ain’t what it used to be.
In olden times, we had Mimi Rogers and David Duchovny asking big questions, or at least Debbie Harry and the Man from Mars eating guitars. These days, we’re stuck with “The Leftovers,” an etiolated HBO series by the guy who dragged out “Lost” for however many number of seasons. And now cometh this thoroughly mystifying reboot of the “Left Behind” movies (called, simply, “Left Behind”), with an alarming bevy of blond beauties and Nicolas Cage at his most somnambulist.
The usual problems with message filmmaking tie together the shoelaces of the new “Left Behind”: With so much emphasis on proselytizing, there’s little energy remaining for, you know, characters, plotting, dialogue. It takes upward of 30 minutes to reach the inciting incident.
Seriously, 30-plus minutes to get to the thing we all know is gonna happen. Antsy viewers will be praying for the Rapture by 10 minutes.
For the unenraptured, that “thing” is the abrupt disappearance of millions of people all around the world — including all children — leaving only clothes behind, but not fillings or pacemakers or whatever. Guess God hates trousers.
And about all kids being saintly — the filmmakers have apparently never spent an afternoon in a preschool.
Cage plays a glaze-eyed pilot winging toward an affair with an impossibly hot, blond flight attendant because of his wife’s (Lea Thompson’s) unending evangelizing. Which turns out to be a virtue, by the way. The evangelizing, not the affair.
Chad Michael Murray, in the old Kirk Cameron slot, is handsome as a crusading journalist who seems way too good to be left behind, but is, for dramatic purposes. Ditto new(-ish)comer Cassi Thomson, who actually shows promise as Cage and Thompson’s hot, blond daughter. And there’s a hot, blond passenger, too.
Babies disappear on flying planes and parents object, but don’t tear around the aisles screaming or, say, look under the seats. People suddenly reveal themselves behind curtains to have Xanax-calm conversations. Because that happens a lot IRL, OMG.
That lack of concern for the way people actually interact renders the film useless as entertainment, or as a conversion tool.
Although there was this meme-worthy gem, the payoff line delivered by Jordin Sparks:
“I don’t know what this is.”
“Why don’t I just shoot you in the face?”
It’s attitudes like that, that get one left behind.
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