The Bay (Barry Levinson)

[Stay Puft]

THE BAY
Director: Barry Levinson

IMDb page (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1713476/)

http://i.imgur.com/C5DwX.jpg

[Stay Puft]

I could go either way on this.

Some of it is entertaining. The premise (I knew nothing going in, probably always a good thing) makes for some sick fun as the situation unfolds and you realize what's going on. Levinson plays up the mystery of that quite a bit. Unfortunately, that's about all he's got going on. Much of the film is repetitive and didactic, and worst of all, Levinson feels the need to over explain the premise in the second half, which hurts the film significantly, both in the way it deadens the ecological message and reveals the inherent shallowness/silliness of the core idea. They basically made a movie out of a freaky internet image that was making the rounds, and show the image repeatedly in the movie because that's probably the extent of their research material. It's like a film adaptation of some dude's "why did I google that / kill it with fire" moment one night a couple years back.

That doesn't amount to much of a movie in retrospect. I do appreciate the humor Levinson brings to the material, as it lends some needed self-awareness, but it's ultimately not enough to transcend the film's shortcomings, both conceptually and in Levinson's otherwise clunky direction, so I'm leaning nay.

[transmogrifier]

Repeats itself, says the same thing over and over, duplicates its material, gets very samey very quickly, lacks variety, revisits itself again and again.....

And I wish they hadn't felt the need to use the annoying reporter as glue to hold all the footage together.

[Dukefrukem]

Bad. I liked premise with the format of found footage, but none of it is convincing. None of the CDC, EPA, Mayor, Governor, doctor's, scientists speak like they are actually in the profession they are portraying which is the biggest distraction as the movie chugs along. Would then CDC ever recommend a doctor to leave all of his patients with missing limbs? Would a scientist describe something as "fun stuff"? And would the CDC communicate via skype? They could at the very least cast a woman who sounds like she's a news reporter.

[Skitch]

This was far from perfect...but really affected me. Medical stuff freaks me out. Really got under my skin. Thumbs up, and I'll never watch it again.