What's in The Box?

If I'm not mistaken, I heard good things about The Box. This far out, I can't remember where I heard those good things which is itself a good thing because I can't remember who to smack for making me think this movie might be good.

I expected a heck of a lot more which is maybe my own fault. Firstly, I knew it was based on a short story, but I somehow missed that it was based on a science fiction short story. Perhaps knowing that might have prepared me for the Sphere-like convoluted mess I was about to see. Secondly, I had my own idea of what this movie was about based on what I THOUGHT I'd heard. More on that later. Either way, this movie was not what I expected, wanted, or needed to see.

The basic premise is someone leaves a mysterious box on the doorstep of a yuppie couple. Later, a mysterious burn victim shows up and tells the wife her family will get a million dollars if she presses the button, but someone else will die.

Now, there are many directions this movie could go in. We could have a movie about the process of this young family trying to decide whether or not to press that damn button. We could have them press the button and then feeling guilty, they attempt to try to stop the death of the other person. We could have them press it and it turns out the million is sort of a monkey's paw. I'm no writer, so I'm just speculating here. But my lousy speculations are better than what we got.

So at the start, Cameron Diaz and James Madsen (and in retrospect, I honestly do not remember their characters' names) are woken up at quarter to 6 by a ring of the doorbell. She goes down to answer, but has barely missed the person. However, a box wrapped in plain, brown paper is left on the doorstep. She looks at it all curious like, picks it up, and brings it into the house.

Now, here's the part where I was wondering what the hell. In a post-9/11 and post-anthrax scare age, it is the rare dumbass who will just grab a random box left on their doorstep and bring it inside.

Next we cut to the couple opening the box in their weirdly decorated kitchen. It has one of those built-in eat-in areas and everything is yellow and brown including some wacky-ass wall paper, a very ROUND countertop TV, and the Trimline phone on the wall. I think, "Strange set design choice, but whatevs."

Anyhoodle, inside the box is a wooden, uh, box with a button on it which is under a locked dome...thingy. There's also a card which states a Mr. Stewart will come see them at 5. The couple and their son (who I'm guessing to be about 12) speculate about what the story is with the box, then head off to work, school, whatevs.

Here's another spot where I'm scratching my head. Everyone is dressed really funny with kinda old-fashioned hair and James Marsden is driving a kick-ass old skool Corvette, but it's no big whoop. Oh, yeah, Cameron Diaz is limping.

We first follow Cameron Diaz to her job at some fancy private school. She's teaching a class and some creepy kid with godawful blown-out hair is giving her the hairy eyeball. Mid-discussion, he asks her why she limps and she just stares blankly with melty-sad face (get used to that, you'll see it A LOT), then he asks if they can see it which she proceeds to do. To their credit, his classmates are calling him out for being an asshole, but they all stare intently as she takes off her sock and boot to show she's missing four toes on her right foot. The bell rings and everyone leaves with Blow Out proudly laughing.

This made no sense to me. Cameron Diaz reacts as if NO ONE had ever asked her what happened to her foot. I'll leap ahead and say, we learn later that she's lived half her life with this condition. Are we do believe that in 17 years she hasn't encountered that question? Hell, was he the FIRST student to ever ask? Whatever, ultimately, that has nothing to do with anything really, except it does sorta. Let's move on.

Next she's called into her boss's office where she's told the faculty tuition program is being eliminated. She looks sad somemore. I wasn't sure if that meant she was losing her job or that their kid wouldn't be able to go to school for free.

Then we head over to NASA and it might have been around here that someone said something that FINALLY clued me in that this movie was taking place in the 1970s. Yeah, I should have maybe caught my snap earlier, but the fashion, hairstyles (well, except for Blow Out's) and decor is juuuust this side of retro-fabulous that it could be modern-day.

So James Marsden is at a conference where his boss is talking about a space camera which took pictures of Mars which James Marsden helped develop. Some reporter lady asks question about the NSA's involvement which causes the room to go all a-twitter. The boss says he knows nothing about that sketchy-looking NSA guy sitting in the front row of the conference. James Marsden says something about the space camera to the lady.

Then we cut to James Marsden working on a special foot for Cameron Diaz. Some coworkers ask him what happened to her foot and he explains that when she was young she had to have a foot X-ray for some reason and the doctor accidentally over-radiated her foot causing her to loose 4 toes. Her family sued and she only got $10,000 which might have been a lot of money in the 1950s. Anyway, so now we know what happened to her foot which is sorta kinda important, but not really I don't think.

Oh, this is getting far longer than it needs to be. I'm not so good with the summing up but I'm gonna try and I'm gonna try to do so without spoiling it, but that might be tough since I kinda don't know what the spoiler would be because the plot is dumb or at least it was to me.

So Frank Langella shows up at 5 and tells Cameron that she can get the million dollars if she presses the button but someone they don't know will die and they can't talk to anyone about it. And he gives her $100 just for talking to him. She and James fret over it for forever then go see a play while the kid is at home with his babysitter. They come home and fret somemore. The next day, they fret evenmore then go to work. They come home and discuss it a bit, then Cameron just slaps the button like she's on Family Feud. Frank shows up later to retrieve the box and give them the money. Meanwhile, Cameron's dad is investigating a domestic homicide where a woman was shot by her husband while their kid was locked in the bathroom. They go to her sister's rehearsal dinner at Cameron's parents' mansion (that's some salary for a cop) and Blow Out is there giving them the peace-sign and staring. Other people are also looking at them weird. Someone tells James Blow Out humiliated Cameron in class. He attacks him and blow out gets a nosebleed. Oh yeah, lots of people get nose bleeds. They leave the party and go home. James drives the baby-sitter home. She starts spouting nonsense, gets a nose bleed then passes out. He takes her to her motel, then finds out she isn't whom she claims to be. She goes into her motel and all the other guests come out and stare at her as she makes her way to her room. James and Cameron both try to find out what Frank's story is. He has her dad run Frank's license plate number, she goes to the library to find out more about him. Frank calls her and tells her he knows what they're up to because he has employees everywhere. A weird looking dude watches Cameron from her backyard while she talks to Frank on the phone. James get accosted by a bunch of weirdos at a library where he gets chased into a room with 3 water portals. Cameron wakes up at home to find James in a waterportal hover over her. The water portal breaks and James falls out and they now have a flooded house. The kid wants to know what's going on, but the script makes nosense so he's in the same boat as us. They go to her sister's wedding. James gets kidnapped at gunpoint by the guy accused of killing his wife earlier. He drives and spouts nonsense until they stop the truck because of a Santa in the middle of the road. They stare for 20 minutes then get creamed by a truck. Paramedics arrive and only find one person at the scene. Back at the wedding, The kid goes looking for his dad and Cameron goes looking for the kid. Both end up kidnapped. And also at some point sketchy-looking NSA guy took James's boss to the place where Frank was struck by lightning which killed him but didn't. Frank is apparently watching all this from his own special water portal. Anyway, NSA guy takes the kid back to the motel where the guy from the backyard walks into the pool with the kid. James gets dragged before NSA guy and his boss yells something about him making a decision that will change everything or some such. Suddenly, James and Cameron are dropped off at home where Frank is waiting for them in their kitchen. Where's their son? What happened to the million dollars? What does Frank want?

I won't spoil it even though I don't think anyone should waste their time watching this movie. I confess to not being a huge sci-fi fan, although I can enjoy a sci-fi movie or even a sci-fi story now and then. I just found this to be too convoluted for its own good. I'm not sure if something got lost from page to screen or if the short story is just this random.

I guess I had hoped for a different story. A good movie could have been made about the family pressing the button and dealing with ramifications of that choice both real and psychological. Every action has a consequence. There was some of that, but none of it really made any sense. Heck, we don't even see them spend a dime of the money. Once Frank delivers it, it's never brought up again really. All the crap about water portals and other dimensions just seemed so unnecessary, but again, this was me watching this not realizing that the story had a sci-fi base (only caught that little tip during the end credits). I just can't say I liked this movie.

And by the way, this movie had a whopping 25 minutes of freaking trailers before it started! Twenty-five minutes!!! Normally, I would have just skipped them, but (1) I was making dinner, so I wasn't in a rush for the movie to start and (2) I didn't expect there to be so damn many. Didn't help that none of the trailers were for movies I even vaguely want to see...except maybe Book of Eli.

But speaking of movies about actions having consequences, I instant-watched a little flick called Nine Dead over a couple of nights. It's the story of 9 people who are kidnapped and locked in a room by a dude in a mask. He tells them they have to figure out why they are all there or he will kill one of them every 10 minutes. The star of the movie is Melissa Joan Hart aka Sabrina the Teenaged Witch. She is a horrible actress. Everyone else in the cast is awful too. The story takes some huge leaps of logic and you have to be prepared to hear a lot of yelling, but it's a okay flick to instant watch while you're maybe trying to figure out the best way to pack your yarn for your move or analyzing what that brown-ish thing with a freezer fuzz afro is next to the ice cream.