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The good news is Dakota Fanning is not at all convincing as a drunken 13-year-old clairvoyant. The bad news is that the screenplay calls for Dakota Fanning, in a single scene, to try to sharpen her powers as a "watcher" with alcohol. After she fails in ordering a vodka martini, she buys a beer-size bottle of some sort of booze.
That, however, is just one of the many reasons you might wish you could erase this action thriller from your mind, in the same the way characters pay freaky experts to "wipe" their memories as if this were some weird cinematic cousin to "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."
"Push" is an action thriller about psychic espionage in which people fall into various categories such as watchers who can see the future, movers (or telekinetics, who can move objects with their mind), sniffers (who suss out information with smell) and the all-powerful pushers, who can implant ideas in other people's minds.
If a pusher tells someone, "Put your gun in your mouth and pull the trigger," that person does it -- and more than once in a movie that seriously tests its PG-13 rating. The plot is like a tangled mess of knotted hair that won't yield to combs or conditioners. It's about a shadowy government agency called the Division that is trying to round up psychics for experiments to boost their powers. Of particular interest is an escaped pusher (Camilla Belle) who survived an experiment that killed everyone else.
Fanning plays a spunky second-generation watcher who turns for help to Nick Gant (Chris Evans), a second-generation mover. He has been hiding out in Hong Kong where apartment complexes and skyscrapers provide seedy, surreal or spectacular backdrops.
The movie's ending seems to keep the door open for a sequel, but not even Djimon Hounsou's persuasive powers as a pusher could force me to recommend it.
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, brief strong language, smoking and a scene of teen drinking.
What a cast!
What a waste.
"The Pink Panther 2" stars Steve Martin, Jean Reno, Alfred Molina, Emily Mortimer, Andy Garcia, Lily Tomlin, John Cleese, Jeremy Irons and Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in a sorry sequel that seems like a stitched together collection of sketches.
Among them: While investigating a theft at the Vatican, Inspector Clouseau borrows the pontiff's vestments, addresses him as "Mr. Pope" and observes, "You're a very spiritual man, aren't you?"
In a follow-up to the 2006 movie that earned $159 million worldwide, Clouseau (Martin) is sprung from parking-ticket detail to join a "dream team" assigned to track down a master criminal called The Tornado, who has been plucking world treasures with abandon.
The bumbling French detective joins a Brit (Molina), a Japanese investigator (Yuki Matsuzaki), Italian playboy (Garcia) and an author (Rai Bachchan) who is a Tornado expert.
"The Pink Panther," has one delightful bit of business involving wine bottles and juggling and some not so delightful scenes involving accidental fires, karate and faces that pitch forward into cakes. As soon as someone promises, "If Clouseau solves this case, I'm perfectly willing to run around like a bare-bummed idiot in a tutu," you can assume that will come to pass.
Some people have an appetite for such silliness, but I don't happen to be among them.
Martin, working with Cleese who takes over for Kevin Kline as Chief Inspector Dreyfus, gives it his all. He drives a teeny Smart Car, he skulks, he dangles from balconies, he dances, he pronounces "hamburger" and other words with a funny accent, he sports a wackily whimsical mustache, he awkwardly courts a colleague (Mortimer) and thwarts the American (Tomlin) who attempts to school him in political and social correctness.
He does everything except make us laugh enough, or at all, to justify the ticket price and popcorn.
Rated PG for some suggestive humor, brief mild language and action.
