Posted on March 19, 2006
Sandra Bullock should really stop making movies. Or at least stop starring in them. Gone are the days of “Speed,” “The Net” and “A Time to Kill.” They have been replaced by clunkers like “Speed 2: Cruise Control,” “The Lake House” and her latest bomb, “Premonition.”
In it, Bullock plays Linda Hanson, a housewife in a seemingly picture-perfect marriage. Her husband, Jim (played by Julian McMahon, “Nip/Tuck”), goes on a business trip and is killed in a car crash. She starts making funeral arrangements and her mother, Joanne (played by Kate Nelligan, “The Cider House Rules”) comes to town to help out. However, the next day she wakes up to find Jim having coffee in their kitchen, in perfect health. Her mother is gone, and Jim hasn’t left for his business trip yet. Inexplicably, she figures his death was just a dream and goes about her daily routine. Even when her daughters, Megan and Bridgette (played by Shyann McClure and Courtney Taylor Burness, respectively) forget their lunches just like they did the day Jim died, Linda barely flinches.
That night, she and Jim go to bed, but she wakes up to find herself back in the middle of her nightmare, with Jim dead and her mother back in her house. This goes on for the rest of the movie, with Linda waking up on different days of the week, alternating before and after her husband’s accident. Once she realizes what is going on, she must try to find a way to stop Jim’s death.
The flip-flopping of Jim being alive and dead gets old really fast and also stops viewers from investing in his character. The audience gets so used to him being dead that it doesn’t matter whether or not she stops it from happening because it’s already happened five times.
The whole movie is horribly executed, with bad dialogue and overacting, but the first half of the movie at least made the viewer want to know what was going on. The second half becomes painful to watch, as the story ceases to make sense or offers any real thrills. In lieu of actual suspense, the movie tries to create some out of thin air when Linda forgets her laundry on the clothesline and must race outside to get it. The scene is so over-dramatic, especially considering her current circumstances. She acts like it would be the end of the world if her laundry got wet, yet each day she wakes up, she doesn’t know if her husband will be dead or alive. It doesn’t really seem like this lady has her priorities straight.
The explanation for why she’s having these premonitions, a.k.a. time-traveling episodes, is about as solid as Swiss cheese, but by the end of this movie, viewers don’t even care — they just want it to be over. Any interest in the characters or plot left long ago, just as the audience should have. Bullock needs to stick to smaller roles in movies that are actually good, like “Infamous” and “Crash,” and stop starring in these fifth-rate thrillers. This movie is boring and hopefully the audience will have a premonition not to see it.
