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[Odler]

"Signs" is the kind of movies I would not miss. Not because Newsweek

Magazine placed a picture of Night Shyamalan on its cover, and

decided that the young director (he is 32) of Signs and The Sixth

Sense is the next Spielberg. Only because the plot (all about

aliens) sounded intelligent, new wave.

So after making a late hospital round on Friday, and under a

vanishing thunderstorm, I caught up with the action at 1:00 a.m.

(Viva Summer schedule). I sat in a full theater, among teenagers

kissing and talking loudly in their cell phones (new!). My kind of

ambiance...

The movie is a new "Encounter of the Third Kind". Aliens coming to

Earth. Mel Gibson, an episcopalian priest, single father of two,

living in the middle of a corn field deals with the event that goes

worldwide, followed on CNN (despite the fact that in the real world

Fox News has better ratings).

The movie is all about fear. The Hitchkockian experience of fear.

Fear out of anything and everything. And in parallel, the reverse

story telling of a clergy man's loss of faith.

I disagree with Roger Ebert who gave a four-star (out of a possible

four) rating to "Signs".

The first three-quarters of the film, a psychological thriller,

deserve it. The later part unfortunately panders too much to

traditional Hollywood. The spectator almost feels the moment when

the producer stepped in and said: "Enough artful movie-making here,

now send some aliens in, and let's start making some monies."

Then the film sank. Even then (and the following is a spoiler), the

movie could have kept a lot of its intellectual cachet if Shyamalan

had left the alien as a shadow, and kept the baseball bat on the wall.

What do you think?

By the way, do you think extra-terrestrials do exist? Should we

start a discussion about this topic?

In the meantime, go and see "Signs". But ready yourself for a

letdown.

http://www.jeanlouie.com/

(OdlerRobert Jeanlouie, Saturday, Aug 3, 2002)