Doctor Barbie has sent the following report to Geek World Headquarters and FATHER GEEK. While critial of the flick, Father Geek hopes this look at this motion picture is just colored by the amount of red this reviewer sees on a day to day basis, I'm still looking forward to this one alot.

Caught a preview of this and ever since then I've been trying to figure out why I didn't really love it. It had all the elements that would make me love it -- Nic Cage, blood and trauma (med student here), wonderful direction, but I walked out feeling bored. I shouldn't have been bored! What bothered me most was my ambivalence towards the characters. Nic Cage is a paramedic haunted by the death of his patients, searching for someone to save, but God he brings me down! His voice overs are too monotone -- I can see on his face that he's depressed and perhaps the monotone voice was supposed to make me realize that he's beaten down, but it just got old. I didn't buy it or him, and I had to for the movie to get me. I've seen this monotone sad, slow looking Nic Cage before and I didn't see anything new except big dark circles marring his usually penetrating blue eyes.

There are some really good elements to this movie -- Ving Rhames, fun, vibrant and new, the ghost that follows Nic Cage, the surreal, eerily beautiful moments that pepper the movie. I just feel upset with the movie because it really should have been better. Maybe it was better and I just didn't feel it. But if a person in the medical profession who normally would connect with someone haunted by lost patients doesn't connect with said person -- who's going to connect? This isn't an action movie, it's not ER with Nic Cage. It's supposed to be haunting and emotional and instead it felt forced and unreal. My paramedic friends actually hated the movie even while they felt it was somewhat realistic (aside from the moment where Nic Cage is putting an IV in a shot drug dealer WITHOUT GLOVES !! HELLO!!) Anyway, I'm disappointed and I just wanted to share.

Dr. Barbie