Thursday, July 24, 2008

Chaos Theory - DVD Review

CHAOS THEORY (**) - Starring Ryan Reynolds, Emily Mortimer, Stuart Townsend, Sarah Chalke, Mike Erwin and Alessandro Juliani.
Written by Daniel Taplitz.
Directed by Marcos Siega.

I've been impressed with the steady improvement in Ryan Reynolds' acting ability, and he doesn't backslide here. He is performance worked in the comedic and dramatic parts for this movie. He plays a wound-up guy who runs a tight schedule. One day his wife sets his clock back ten minutes to loosen him up, and it triggers a chain of events that sends his life spiralling out of control.

Good premise. Unfortunately near the beginning of the chain of events, we have this contrived misunderstanding that requires his wife to be an irrational nut, enough to make Ralph Farley say "Maybe this is just a misunderstanding. Let's try to get more information." So for the next twenty minutes or so I watched with arms metaphorically folded, wondering what other careening coincidences the script would throw out there in order to get to Point B.

It eventually recovered, only to dwindle into a maudlin ending. I chalk it up as another interesting misfire.

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