Phenomenon - Sure Ain't That

Here's a fun concept. Let's put together a film with heavy sci-fi elements and themes in the vein of Twilight Zone and mash it together with a poorly motivated romance and have John Travolta stare at trees for the majority of it. That sounds like punishment. Guess what though? It killed it. The box office loved this film despite the critics apprehensions. Flocks of people wanting to see some feel goodie type jobbers fled to the theater thinking that John Travolta was making a huge comeback (it was over 2 years later) and that he was good at acting as he did great at looking confused in Pulp Fiction.  That's neat and all but here's the deal with this film. It's a continuous set of missed opportunities to be something truly good. It seems that a writer had a fantastic concept in a man given super-powers and then can accomplish nothing with them but have his life ruined by them and a pariah to his former neighbors. That's good stuff. However, the studio clearly stuck their damn noses in and said, "Well we need to have an hour of it be taken up by a romance. That'll get the ladies involved." In this case they were right when it came to cash, but relegates this film to the folks at Stinker Madness to expose it's flaws. So now you've got this romance crammed into a sci-fi film in post-writing. Now I just saw Passengers (Pratt, Lawrence - 2016) and it is very much a love-story set against a sci-fi space travel story and it's quite well done. Romance/sci-fi mashups CAN happen and be good. However, it needs to be part of the concept and writing from the start. This didn't happen here and this romance starts to fall apart before it even gets going. Their relationship does not have a point B in it. There's A) where she is not interested and then C) she loves him. When did that happen? Oh yeah we were trying to tell a different story during the usual B).  Beyond that, the film is quite stupid and falls victim to the idiot plot thanks to Travolta's George being a true idiot and Robert Duvall's Doctor of Town not ever looking at a medical chart. Then there's the reveal of the source of his super-powers and completely defeats the entire moral that the film has tried to establish beforehand.  It's not good and not worth revisiting. Stay clear of all but the most bold.