This week Brotherton went to see the new Will Smith film "Seven Pounds" - must say the trailers looked well crap to me anyway!
Seven Pounds
When I saw the poster for Seven Pounds featuring a very placid-looking Will Smith with the phrase 'From the Director of Pursuit of Happyness' the first thing I said was - Will Smith is trying to get another Oscar nod again. In this utter dreck of a movie, there's no chance this time.
The film beings with is Ben Thomas (Smith), an IRS tax auditer who dials 911 to report his own suicide, then it flashbacks to show his motivations for doing this. Starting off with Thomas visiting seven random unrelated people who all have either life-threatening illnesses or turbulent home lives, and is reaching to help them. Why is he helping them, why is he suicidal and why is he using his brother's name and occupation to get to them?
The twist in the end reveals all, and when the film doesn't already bore you to aggravation with its meandering plot, it hammers you with a revelation that attempts to be emotionally devastating, but is more likely to leave you frowning as it simply strips the film of all logic and sense.
I hate films like these. Their entire success of these type of mystery dramas are solely dependent on the shocking twist at the end of the film (look up M. Night Shyamalan) and by doing this, they hold the characters, plot and drama on a leash so the audience can't figure out what's going on or why, and by restricting the audience from these elements, by the film's end you'll probably won't even care.
What I almost didn't get was, how this film was slammed by critics but has a current score of 7.6 on Imdb. In the cinema, there were some women crying by the film's close, and some others were rolling their eyes back. It all depended on if you were suckered in by the endless and pretentious melodrama and Smith's puppy-dog eyes trying to tell us he's a tortured soul. I ain't buying it and neither were others.
Will Smith botched up last summer with the contrived Hancock, and now he's screwed his award chances with this ludicrous, misery-guts soap opera. Save yourself seven pounds and don't bother seeing it.
Rating: 1 out of 5.
