BEFORE: Well, I said I'd get back to narratives - but I never said there wouldn't be another connection to 9/11. This is just how my mind works - one film's events (hopefully) leading naturally into another. I've got another crossroads coming in couple days - do I stick with the Mideast theme and watch "Argo" and "Zero Dark Thirty", or save those for my war-related chain in two months? I think, once again, I'll let the actor linking decide for me.
THE PLOT: A nine-year-old boy searches New York City for the lock that matches a mysterious key left behind by his father, who died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
AFTER: And then, Hollywood screwed up 9/11. Congratulations, someone found a way to both exploit AND trivialize the 9/11 attacks at the same time. I know this is based on a book, and I haven't read that, so I can't really comment on it, but if that book is any good, then something appears to have gone horribly wrong in the adaptation.
Let me preface my comments by talking about "Let's Make a Deal", which is an old TV game-show that is now back on the air – the old version used to be hosted by a man named Monty Hall, and he has now lent his name to a math problem than spun out from the show.
Imagine you are a contestant on the program, and the host presents you with three doors. Behind one is a fabulous prize, and behind the others are less-than-fab joke prizes, called "zonks". You get to choose a door, let's say door #1, and then Monty reveals one of the zonks behind door #2 or door #3. Now, you're given the chance to either keep the door you chose first, or switch to the remaining door. Should you switch?
Some might think it's a 50-50 proposition – stand or switch. But if you work out the probabilities, you actually have a 66% chance of winning the top prize if you switch. I resisted this line of thinking for a while, but eventually ran all possible scenarios on paper and determined that the 66% odds are correct. The reason this occurs is that the host is never going to reveal the jackpot location, and in fact by opening a door, he's trying to make the contestant believe that a new game has started, one with 50-50 odds, and in fact the old game is still being played. Door #1 had a 33% chance of concealing the jackpot when the initial choice was made, and those odds still apply, since none of the parameters have been changed. Door #1 had a 66% chance of NOT concealing the jackpot, and those odds are later applied to the sole non-picked door.
To further prove this, you can expand the number of doors to 4, 10, or any number, really. If you go up to 100 doors – in that scenario, the contestant has a 1% chance of initially picking the jackpot, and as doors get opened, and the total number of doors gets smaller, those odds remain at 1%. Meanwhile, the 99% odds get re-distributed among the non-picked doors. If there were, for example, 3 non-picked doors left, each would have a 33% chance of holding the jackpot, while the contestant's pick would still have a 1% chance.
If offered the chance to switch doors at this point, it seems like a no-brainer. But still, there would still be that 1-in-100 chance that the original pick was good. Meaning, if you ran the scenario 100 times with 100 contestants, you might expect that only one of them would win the jackpot by holding on to their original pick. (ah, but which one?)
The reason I bring this up tonight – besides the fact that my wife and I played a mock version with three cups and proved the 66% winning ratio – is that this film does its own version of a shell game with its plot. We're presented with a puzzle, a mystery, a quest, and it just doesn't pay off. It's like the audience was forced to switch doors and ended up with a zonk for a prize. I love puzzles, and to say I'm disappointed with the puzzle's answer in this film is an understatement.
So, the kid whose father used to send him on manufactured quests around the city (because THAT's safe...) tries to reconnect with him by sending HIMSELF on a wild-goose chase around the city. Here's where the film broke down for me, because in thinking about the probability - there are over 8 million New Yorkers, and he essentially goes around knocking on random doors, asking people if they knew his father. The odds of getting any result by doing this would be WAY less than 1%, but then again, Hollywood.
NITPICK POINT #1: This quest is set off by a word, which appears on a key envelope, which leads him to meet EVERY New Yorker with that word as a last name. But that word is also a word, and a color - there's ZERO indication that the word is a name. So, I'm forced to call "shenanigans".
NITPICK POINT #2: Walking from Manhattan to places like Fort Greene, Brooklyn? Glendale, Queens? On kid-sized legs? OK, not impossible, but again, highly highly improbable. It would have taken him most of the day just to GET there, assuming he had the fortitude. And then by the time he got there, it would be past the time where he'd need to turn around and walk back. More shenanigans.
On top of that, the main character is both incredibly annoying and unbelievably precocious. I doubt that combination of traits even exists in today's kids. I get that his father died, and that has screwed up him up somewhat, but I think he was a bit funny to begin with. Now, presumably as a result of 9/11 he's afraid of planes, bridges, subways, loud things, meat-eaters, plus he appears to have OCD, ADD, possibly Asbergers - at what point does someone decide that maybe this kid should be on medication, or be sent to a therapist? No, just leave him alone, I'm sure he'll be fine.
When you think about who this kid is and what he's been through, is it appropriate to allow him to run all over the city, at (apparently) all hours of the day and night? When does he go to school? I guess he doesn't - again, he'll probably be fine. What about "stranger danger" - killers, rapists, pedophiles, or worse? Nope, he's got some stuff to work out, so all those concerns are immaterial. What a crock. You can't have it both ways, pointing out his fears and then also negating them at the same time.
I'm leaving a bit out here, because I don't want to give it all away. My mother gave away a key point of the plot to me, and I hate when she does that. (The only time she declares "Spoiler Alert" is when she's checking the leftovers in the fridge.) But that plot point also strained the bounds of credulity, and defied the odds of probability. And on top of all that, the boy had a strained relationship with his mother, and as his quest started pulling them apart, in a fantastically unbelievable way, ended up drawing them closer together. That should NOT have been possible. What a crock.
Then we come to the shell-game of an ending. To the film's credit, the quest does not succeed in the way the boy had hoped - because that would have bothered me more, I think. There is some manner of unexpected success, but again it's mired in morose sentiment. But celebrating the fact that this kid who was afraid to talk to people ended up making so many new friends along the way - this is like getting to the end of "Lord of the Rings", and having Frodo and Sam fail in their quest to destroy the ring, but they say, "Well, it's not a loss, since we got to meet Aragorn and Legolas along the way." Sometimes it is all about the destination, and not the journey - at least, it should be.
Honestly, I would rather watch a film like "Rebirth" with real people talk about their experiences, than something with this level of manufactured sentimentality. At what point does this become manipulation, an exploitation of the national tragedy? Plus, it just doesn't make a lick of sense.
Starring Thomas Horn, Tom Hanks (last heard in "Toy Story 3"), Sandra Bullock (last seen in "Speed 2: Cruise Control"), Max Von Sydow (last seen in "Robin Hood"), John Goodman (last seen in "Trouble With the Curve"), Viola Davis (last seen in "It's Kind of a Funny Story"), Jeffrey Wright (last seen in "Quantum of Solace"), Zoe Caldwell.
RATING: 4 out of 10 oxymorons
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