Filmgoers will have nightmares about this "thriller" - for all the wrong reasons.
By RICK GERSHMAN
Published April 29, 2004
[Photo: Lions Gate Films]
Robert De Niro plays Richard Wells, a shady geneticist who convinces a couple that he can clone their deceased son.
Technical difficulties delayed Tuesday's screening of Godsend by a half-hour. Attendees grumbled at an empty screen for a while, and grumbled some more when the wrong film started playing.
Then the projectionist cued up Godsend, and we realized how good we had it with the empty screen.
Sure, it's a variation on an old joke - then the film rolled, and things went downhill from there - but it's true, and a big dumb cliche is the perfect commentary on Godsend, a "thriller" that's about as scary as Godspell.
Greg Kinnear (Stuck on You) and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (The Punisher) play the Nelsons, whose 8-year-old son Adam (Cameron Bright) is killed when a car veers into him on the edge of a busy street. It's an accident that director Nick Hamm stages so ineffectively it would be funny if it weren't exploiting the death of a child for cheap shock value.
The grieving couple soon get an offer they can't refuse from Don Corleone - sorry, that was a flashback to when Robert De Niro still was an actor. The offer is from De Niro's Richard Wells, a shady geneticist who claims he can clone an exact duplicate of Adam as replacement.
Mr. and Mrs. Nelson go for the deal and Adam v. 2.0 grows up to be a healthy boy - haunted by visions, including those of dead people. Just call it The Sixth Senseless.
A whole lot of budget-saving conversations commence, the better to afford De Niro's per diem, and occasionally someone moves suddenly just to remind us that this is supposed to be scary. Failing at scares, the filmmakers go for artsy symbolism: The name "Adam" is the most obvious, but his crucifixion pose in an examining room is just, well, ungodly.
De Niro's been showing up for the paycheck for a while, but we can't recall him ever being just plain bad like he is here. Romijn-Stamos is playing way out of her league as a grieving mother. Realizing this, Hamm gets her made up like she has a bad case of the flu, and she squints a lot.
Only Kinnear seems to be giving it the old college try, attempting to work some nuance into a character who, we're told, is exceptionally bright and yet acts with monumental stupidity.
It's hard to blame Kinnear when he gets lines like: "Maybe this is my punishment for wanting something I never should have had."
So much for the axiom "don't say it - show it." Godsend shows us a sum that can't even equal the parts of its parts. We say: God, send it back.
Godsend
Grade: D
Director: Nick Hamm
Cast: Greg Kinnear, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Robert De Niro, Cameron Bright
Screenplay: Mark Bomback
Rating: PG-13; mild violence, frightening images, brief sexuality and profanity
