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"PREMONITION"
(2007) (Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon) (PG-13)

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QUICK TAKE:
Suspense/Thriller: A woman tries to learn the fate of her husband when she repeatedly wakes up on inconsecutive days, sometimes to find he's alive, but on others that he's perished in a car accident.
PLOT:
Linda Hanson (SANDRA BULLOCK) seems to be leading the idyllic suburban lifestyle. Married to a handsome man, Jim (JULIAN McMAHON), and mother to cute daughters Megan (SHYANN McCLURE) and Bridgette (COURTNEY TAYLOR BURNESS), she'd seem to have it all. All of that's shattered, however, when a sheriff arrives at her door one day to give her the bad news that her husband was killed the previous day in a car accident.

Shocked by the news, Linda tries to cope with the help of her mom, Joanne (KATE NELLIGAN), and best friend, Annie (NIA LONG). However, it all seems to have been a bad dream when she wakes up the next morning and Jim is there and very much alive, although a bit distant. Although she's happy he isn't dead, Linda can't shake the all too real experience from the day before, a point reiterated upon waking the following morning where this time Jim is dead again.

Thinking she's losing her mind, especially when she finds a bottle of lithium prescribed by Dr. Roth (PETER STORMARE) and meets various people who seem to know her but she can't remember them, Linda tries to piece together what's occurring. When she finally realizes she's somehow waking up on inconsecutive days, she sets out to save Jim from what seems to be a premonition of his pending death.

OUR TAKE: 3.5 out of 10
You always hear about normal people having premonitions of some catastrophe that later actually occurs, and they feel bad that either they didn't get the word out in time, or no one believed them until it was too late to avoid the calamity. I sometimes wish those supernatural soothsayers would use their powers in Hollywood and warn studio execs of pending cinematic failures and disasters, thus serving to prevent viewer suffering.

Maybe someone could actually make a movie about that. Here's the pitch: John Q. Public is a low-level employee for some big Hollywood studio who begins having premonitions that an upcoming project is going to bomb. He tries to get others to believe him, and even sets out to change the course of the film to prevent its outcome. Yet, as fate often has it, his actions -- in the usual ironic, roundabout way, eventually lead to the same conclusion.

Unfortunately, the appropriately named "Premonition" isn't that film, but those responsible for it probably should have had a vision of the above idea before completing work on this effort. For while it has potential and an intriguing underlying story and theme, its execution is botched to such a degree that it turns out to be quite a boring dud.

In it, the usually charismatic Sandra Bullock plays a woman who has a premonition of her emotionally distant husband's pending death via a vehicular accident. Bill Kelly's script initially has us believe it really occurred as Linda gets the bad news from a sheriff, but things seem a bit screwy as she isn't brought down to ID the body or any such sort of usual routine after such news.

She goes through a day of grieving, slips off to sleep, and lo and behold, discovers the next morning that her dear old hubby - "Nip/Tuck's" Julian McMahon -- is alive and well (if still somewhat cold toward her) in the kitchen. Experiencing that uneasy feeling of "but it seemed so real," she gets through the day and goes to bed, only to discover the next morning, much to her confusion and ours, that he's dead again.

What then follows is the repeated waking cycle where one day he's alive, and the next he's dead. Complicating matters even further, and for reasons never fully known and only briefly theorized in an absurd explanation, the days of her week have become rearranged. Once she realizes this, she sets out to discover what's occurring and tries to figure out why and how a number of strangers -- notably Peter Stormare as a psychiatrist and Amber Valletta as her husband's too-close worker -- are involved.

Her investigation is hampered by that temporal jumping around but does lead to some unsettling discoveries regarding her husband. Accordingly, she finds herself torn about what to do, but when she finally makes up her mind, her course of action alters the means, but nevertheless appears to be leading to the seemingly predetermined end.

With that sort of setup, the stage would seem to be set for a "fun" and/or spooky thriller. Yet, it's anything but that, as the script tries too hard to wrap around itself in some sort of clever manner and thus leaves gaping holes in both logic and believability, while Meenan Yapo's direction is languid at best. He also fills the film with enough red herrings to fill a cinematic fish market, all too obviously telegraphing most of them to make sure we don't miss every clue.

All of which makes us believe they're going to lead up to some sort of spectacular or shocking discovery. Thanks to the general ineptness of the storytelling, however, we don't really care by the time fate deals its hand. I thought perhaps the film would end with Bullock's character dying in the car crash from which she saves her husband, only to have him wake up the next morning and find her still alive, thus starting the cycle anew.

Alas, that's not the case, and while I appreciate what the film was trying to do and say not only about such fate but also relationships and the result of choosing whether to save them or not, the way in which all of that's executed here leaves much to be desired. Boring and limp when it should have been thrilling and building momentum, "Premonition" takes a decent idea and all but completely squanders it. The film rates as a 3.5 out of 10.




Reviewed March 13, 2007 / Posted March 16, 2007


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