Review of Déjà Vu (2006) by David G — 28 Jul 2010

I'm a little schizophrenic about this movie.

I actually enjoyed it quite a bit while I watched it. The plot was fast and intense, and Denzel Washington was in it. I love that guy. And I don't know who this Paula Patton is, but she's about as hot as Philadelphia's been for the last couple weeks or so.

BUT...

The central time travel conceit of this movie is about as implausible as it could possibly be. In itself, that's not a terrible liability--lots of movies are built on impossible or extremely unlikely things. But those movies are pretty open about being fantasies. Deja Vu presents itself as a standard terrorism-centered action blockbuster, but then suddenly springs its sci-fi time travel motif, expecting the audience either not to notice the sudden genre shift, or to find it somehow consistent. That irritated me, even while I was watching the movie, but the irritation increased afterward. In other words, Deja Vu asks us to swallow an incredibly large, elephant-prescription "stupid pill" and to act like it was just a little Viagra.

Just consider the scene where the scientists nominally explain what's happening. (I don't think think there are any spoilers here. Although the time travel thing is presented as a "twist" in the course of the film, anyone who's seen the trailer knows the movie does some hinky stuff with chronology.) There's kind of a wink-wink, nudge-nudge quality to the conversation, as if they're saying, "come on, you've seen time travel movies before, this is one of those, so can we just get on with the action stuff?" When ostensible PhDs in physics and stuff explain insanely complex theory using line drawings of Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and tesseract illustrations from A Wrinkle in Time (great book, btw), you kind of get the sense that they're not really trying.

Well, that's all. I ran out of negativity. It's early in the day, so my reservoir hadn't had time to fill up all the way. (I should have read the news headlines first.).