Push Comes to Shove

A lesson I learned quite some time ago -- good movies don't come out in January and February. If it was a quality dramatic piece, the studio would have released it in December to compete for an Oscar. And if it was a quality action piece, the studio would have saved it until the summer to make a big splash. And yet, this is a lesson I seem to forget... almost every January and February, come to think of it.

I had to relearn it today when I went to go see the new movie, Push. I knew that both Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning were in it, and while neither is an actor whose movies I feel I "must see," both have made some good choices in the science fiction genre before (Evans in Sunshine; Fanning in the mini-series Taken). It also looked to have some fun action in it, from the previews/commercials I'd seen.

I was hoodwinked. I was deceived into seeing a bad comic book movie. I had been led to think this was the story of one telekinetic main character on some grand adventure. It turns out, the filmmakers imagined themselves introducing a new superhero universe, an X-Men or Watchmen or some such, populated with all manner of people with all kinds of different powers. And it wasn't a very interesting or well-constructed universe.

The script was chock full of lousy dialogue that left the actors little to work with. The plot started sketchy, and descended into non-sensical by the third act. (A strange conceit on how one defeats a villain who can see the future comes into play, and while I can imagine it sounding good for half a second to a writer first thinking of it, it absolutely falls apart under even momentary examination.) Characters who begin the movie with limited "superpowers," and who show no real advancement during the movie, are suddenly miles beyond their abilities for the final sequences.

Also among the odd choices in the writing is the creation of a character that even could be played by the likes of Dakota Fanning. It's a bizarre tale to force a 13-year-old girl into. Again, at first exposure, it seems novel, but it immediately starts to unravel.

There were some decent action sequences in the movie, but ultimately almost nothing that hasn't shown up somewhere before. It gets a little adrenaline going here and there, but there are far better ways of doing that than seeing this movie. I rate it a D.