Be Very Afraid-The Omen Remake

Howard Hawks once defined a good movie as containing three great scenes and no bad ones. The Omen remake, which opens today, has only two great scenes (oddly, both of them involve food), and even they can’t stand up to the flood of mediocre-to-laughable action that transpires elsewhere in this interminable thing.

Anyone remember the original, directed with style and pizazz by Richard Donner and starring the impeccable Gregory Peck? Just rent that movie, which is about how a big-shot diplomat winds up raising the spawn of Satan, then apply the current Hollywood remake formula: make it exactly the same, only lamer. Every scene goes on a few seconds too long; the scares are mostly just soundtrack stings; the sets are all bizarrely-huge (like, Incredible Shrinking Woman huge) for some reason; and Julia Stiles’ performance gets so many laughs it could probably just be digitally inserted into Scary Movie 17. The script may as well have been scrawled on cardboard. Seriously, this was a FREE midnight screening and we almost walked out. You have been warned.

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By matthew dewitt in Arts & Entertainment on June 6, 2006 10:00 AM 0 Comments

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mdewitt

I know! Every time I go see a big budget movie these days I wind up feeling stupider than I was when I went in. I guess big-budget summer movies have always been intended as disposable entertainment for sheep, but even so this summer just looks like remake-and-sequel purgatory. No wonder the industry is reporting such big losses.

anon

This review should also be applicable for movies like The DaVinci Code, MI3, X-Men and any other crap that has come out of Hollywood in the past decade or more. This movie is just as good as any of them - take it for what it is, lame entertainment for dull minds who can't find something better to do.