Monday, September 15, 2008

DVDebuts Worth Skipping: SARAH LANDON AND THE PARANORMAL HOUR





Yes, I know: You are won-
dering why I -- why anybody who reads reviews -- would bother with SARAH LANDON AND THE PARANORMAL HOUR. I shall tell you: The critical consensus on this film, not to mention that of Netflix members, was generally so bad that I just had to see if there was a single good thing here that everybody missed. There is not. From the opening scenes, during which so much exposition is spilled so thuddingly, I was certain that the film must have been based upon a very long novel, and that the filmmakers didn't have a clue how in heck (this is family film) to include it all. But no: According to the IMDB, this is an original story/screenplay. Still, the exposition never seems to end. Not since Korea's Dragon Wars have I heard so much non-stop exposition. (Thank you, GreenCine, for allowing me to share this earlier review.) But that movie turned its exposition into camp and had some wonderful special effects. Here, the effects are, well, ineffective. The perpetrators of this "amateur night at the movies" are the Comrie family, two particularly cute members of which are shown above. This group clearly wanted to make a movie, gol' darn it, and so they divided up the duties -- direction, production, writing, acting -- and just did it. I forgive them all. But I must ask that they do not grace us with the sequel that, unless I misread (a two-year-old would not be able to misread anything in this movie), the denouement appears to promise.

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