The Box

Three days later and still difficult to find something to say about this one. I suppose it's a sci-fi outing. Same director who did Donnie Darko which was rather good and intriguing and different and moderately sci fi in nature but mostly focused on human nature I thought. The Box is none of that. Too clearly, there is an idea and the idea wins out over characterization or humanity or anything like real emotions or relationships. Many of the sci fi stories and films I've seen and disliked have a similar thing going on: wacky ideas. In each case, a writer somewhere said, "What if this happened...." and each time it seems the stakes have to be either sillier or more overblown than the last. And The Box takes *so* much time establishing its suburban landscape of 1976 (why 1976 you ask? Good question, I answer). There is so little movement going on in the first 30 minutes of this film it's a dam good thing the wallpaper is wacky and the set designer made sure that every single surface in the film has some uniquely 70s piece of kitsch. *sigh* I lived through the 70s. I lived in a neat suburban tract home in the 70s. It was all very very familiar and absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the story that finally unraveled in the last hour of this 90 minute film.

To sum up, Cameron Diaz and James Marsden are a cute married couple with a cute 12 year son. One day a box wrapped in plain brown paper arrives at their door. It contains a large red button and a note. Enter Frank Langella whose face is half gone. Thank goodness his face is half gone because that signals to all us moviegoers that we are in a sci fi movie and not just a boring suburban drama. Langella gives Diaz the rules about the box and Diaz, because she's a woman, surely there is no other reason and since later another woman does the same thing leading us to believe that women will, clearly, bring down the world around them and us, Diaz pushes the button and all sorts of moral dilemmas ensue.

Given the recent group of really horrible films out (see below), maybe this one is a tad more interesting to watch unravel but if you have something better to do, almost anything else better to do, do it. Any old X-Files rerun is better. And actually, the whole story here might have been cobbled together from a couple of rejected X-Files scripts.