The Art of Bad

There are some bad movies. Then there are some really bad movies.

“A Sound of Thunder” is one of them.

Potentially a good idea from the start, and it does well in its first twenty minutes, the film deteriorates into inane fodder. Nothing makes sense in the film. The internal logic is ridiculous. And like so many science-fiction movies, it takes a good idea and turns it into crap. Then it gets flushed down the crapper. Where it belongs.

“A Sound of Thunder” insults your intelligence with bad science. Award-winning Ray Bradbury wrote the original story which explores the idea of time ripples. How time can affect the future. The alterations crank through the wound in time.

He's a good writer. So he's not to blame for this.

So who's to blame then?

All of it is thrown out for bad acting, dumb science and window dressing. Though none of it gets passed above-average results.

Had I known it was directed by the self-same twat Peter Hyams who did the film “Time Cop,” I would’ve avoided it like the plague.

I did have a problem with the premise, however interesting, in the film: the notion that the death of a butterfly could change the entire history of the world.

The bigger problem is with the way the film's made. It seems like a kindergarten project. With a script that isn’t lively. And actors who look like they’re sleepwalking through the entire film. Did I mention it was dumb too?

You bet I did. And I’ll say it again.

The film tells of a businessman who co-owns a company who brings back rich people to hunt a dinosaur some millions of years ago. They go back for perhaps for five minutes, get their kicks and go back to sprout something like, “I did kill a dinosaur! I did! You wouldn‘t believe it! I can‘t wait to tell my grandkids! Yep!”

Instead it never explores the philosophical issue of man’s disregard for mother nature. What it does is turn everything into an action flick. It doesn’t work.

And it gets dumber. And dumber. I would’ve preferred a date with Paris Hilton than watch this movie again.

I hope I don’t ever resort to this choice. Shoot me if it ever comes to that.

Time travel? Changing history? Parallel universes? I would recommend you watch an old show from the Doctor Who series than this. Doctor Who does it much better. With infinitely greater charm.

The film dictates the idea that evolution never occurred with the human race. And that dinosaurs must’ve died out too. Coming from the evolutionary soup were half-monkey, half-human apes. We assume that the ice age never happened.

Wait. There’s more.

We’re told that time changes at every twenty-four hour intervals. Why? There’s no reason for this.

Then we’re given the same old story that we’ve seen since the first Alien which came out in 1979. I liked the Alien film for this very reason: we expected team leader Captain Dallas to survive the decimated crew and not second-in-command Ripley.

Imagine our surprise when Ripley was the last to survive.

But we keep seeing this same plot in other films. The cast gets cut down like meat on hooks. They get bumped off one-by-one. It’s the same ploy we see in Aliens vs. Predator. And I’d rather not get into that one.

You waste two hours of your own life watching this film. It gives you no enlightenment. It does nothing to lift your spirits. You feel as if you could've spent your time doing something else than watching this farce. Digging beneath your toenails would be better than watching this. Getting eaten by a shark would be better. The list goes on.

There’s definitely one thing came out of this “A Sound of Thunder.“ They made stupidity into a science of its own.