Editor’s note: Daniel F. Hunt and Todd E. Swenson speak candidly about “The Mothman Prophecies,” a new movie in theaters. The commentary reflects how many young men talk about sex, women and movies. This article contains adult content.
T: ” ‘The Mothman Prophecies’ is a thriller, a science fiction, a fantasy and a romance all rolled in to one.”
D: “When I went into the theater I thought this was going to be some scary movie. Ha ha.”
T: “Personally, I had no clue what this movie was about.”
D: “I knew Richard Gere was in it.”
T: “I knew that too, but that was all that I knew. It was two hours, but it felt like it was …”
T and D: “Four!”
D: “It was unbelievable. It started out nice, people were buying a house, Debra Messinger is his wife and she’s pretty hot. She gets killed, not in the car accident, but she has some weird cancer.”
T: “She has some tumor in her frontal lobe. She dies in the beginning. After she died, we uncover pictures that she drew before she died. This is what is linking John Klein (Gere) to the rest of the movie. Because he is wondering what these pictures were. Two years later we pick it up again.”
D: “They say this is a romance because Gere and Messinger got it on in a closet, but they didn’t really get it on. The only nudity in this flick was this ugly teen-age chick in the back of a car and it was for less than five seconds. I would have loved to see Gere hook up with Laura Linney (who plays a police officer), seriously, on camera, going at it, like wild dogs.”
T: “That is a little too much. They say it’s based on true events. True events and a true story are two different things.”
D: “How long was he in Point Pleasant, W.Va.? Like two weeks, right?”
T: “He had to have spent multiple weeks.”
D: “Wouldn’t he have been fired from his job? If you’re 30 and have no direction in life, this might be a movie for you, or a Trekkie fan. God, I hate those people. Put the real people in it and put on the History Channel, for all I care.”
T: “It was unrealistic. They say based on true events, I would have to actually see documents saying that this happened and this is our proof to prove it, because this is a little far-fetched. I think the true events makes the movie a little more appealing to people, like they may think that it could have happened, but I really don’t think that it did.”
D: “Richard Gere as an actor, he has aged pretty well, but I don’t know if you noticed, but he has some bizarre accent that he goes in and out of. Did you ever see ‘The Jackal,’ with Bruce Willis? He had the Irish accent that is real heavy in the beginning and then it is real light at the end.”
T: “Every time you see that guy on a talk show he has a different accent.”
D: “Bingo. The guy is a freak. I think a good movie goes into detail about certain things and certain aspects. I really loved the colors of this movie. The opening sequence with the washed-out screen, when you only see the fluorescent lights. That was cool. It was really dark: dark, dark blue and blood red.”
T: “They used the darkness as a setting for the mood, and the lighting was really good.”
D: “If this is going to win an Oscar for anything it is going to win for lighting effects and sound effects. The music was really cool.”
T: “I don’t really listen to the music, I hear it, but I don’t really pay any attention to it.”
D: “Certain theaters are bad, but Pacific was nice, you heard the rustling, it felt like someone was behind you. The sound and the imagery were good, but the story was lacking.”
T: “The actors didn’t make any difference, the story line was just bad, and the plot was nothing, but the Mothman being in Point Pleasant.”
D: “I would give this movie two stars.”
T: “I think I would go with two and a half.”