Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a little look at SOUND OF THUNDER. This movie sucked hard, so I don't want to spend much time on it, so forgive me if this review is too short.
I walked into the film knowing in my gut that it was going to be a sour experience, but still naively thinking I could scrounge some fun out of it. Hell, I think both BATTLEFIELD EARTH and DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS are hilarious and had a great time watching them in the theater. However unintentional the enjoyment I found in BATTLEFIELD EARTH or D&D was, at least they succeeded on that level. A SOUND OF THUNDER doesn't succeed on any level.
There's a reason the studio is dumping this flick a couple years after it wrapped photography in early September without any TV ads (that I've seen) or a publicity push of any size. The effects at best look like crappy TV and at worst look like early '90s Sega Genesis. The acting is at best mediocre and uninspired and at worst just plain shitty. The direction is lifeless and dull.
The screenwriting is lazy and pedestrian. Nothing organic happens at all. It seemed like shit happened only because the screenwriters needed it to happen, to hell with any foreshadowing or logic!
Matter of fact, the only thing that is great in the movie is Ray Bradbury's original idea, his short story that has been done many times (Simpsons most famously), about a trek to the past where a butterfly is stepped upon that changes the world in drastic ways. Although it's at times hard to find his great story under neath the shitty CGI and horrible script.
The other positive I will give it is the design of the "evolved dinosaurs," those that have combined somehow with primate DNA... so the ape-dinos are well designed... Notice I said the design was well done, not the execution. The CG here is bad, but not as bad as some of the greenscreen work done with Ed Burns and Catherine McCormack as they walk around the futuristic city of Chicago. It was like the worst '50s rear-screen projection (you know, like when the father of a teenage girl is driving around trying to find her before the Gila monster does), but updated so that as the characters fake walk towards camera the greenscreen background moves in a way that made my brain hurt. They did something similar in AUSTN POWERS, I think during the Burt Bacharach musical number, but that was a comedy... you see?
The film is full of continuity problems and like I said earlier, logic problems. The reviews I posted yesterday (click here for more examples of how shitty this movie is) do a great job of summing up how lazy the screenwriters were in sticking to the rules they set up, but let me give you a few more examples of stupidity.
When the survivors of the now "evolved world" (which has been affected by the dead butterfly in waves that are either 24 hours apart or whenever depending on when the writers need it to happen) are driving through the jungle-streets of Chicago, they get attacked by bat-creatures. They all have weapons, but you know what? We need one of the group to die, so when the bat-things rip off the top of the car they all just sit and look at it, admiring the shitty CGI, not doing anything to shoot it for what seems like minutes and then one of them is pulled up and out.
How about another one? The main characters need to take the brain of the mega computer that allows them to jump backward in time from the main Time Safari HQ to another place that'll allow them to jump back before the last time ripple hits them and changes their DNA. The streets are full of monkey-lizards, bat creatures and crazy people with thorns in their face, so just because the writers needed it there's a subway line that runs under the Time Safari building that leads right to where they need to go. How convenient that just happened to be there and the main characters knew it and knew right where it led.
The movie is full of shit like that. While I would say that it wasn't a painful shitty movie, it is still a very shitty movie. At least the pacing is fast so you don't have time to wallow in the shit before new shit assaults your senses. Do me a favor... instead of paying to see this trash, take your ticket money and donate it to the Red Cross for those suffering in the Gulf right now.
My only hope is that some day someone will take Bradbury's story and get some real talent behind it (and this is coming from a guy who loves 2010, so I'm no Peter Hyams hater)... maybe after some 5 years or so we'll see this movie done right.
-Quint
