MovieChat Forums > Donovan's Echo (2012) Discussion > An ok movie

An ok movie

posted 11 years ago by ajjones-198-340523
4 replies | jump to latest

Seriously, I started and stopped this movie twice. This is an ok movie but 5.5 on the ratings and After Earth is getting slammed. Let's get real. This movie dragged from start to finish. The writer had a story but lacked the writing ability to just get to the point scene after scene. Nostalgia and a good plot can't really carry interest. And it was only the high rating that made me keep looking at this.

They dropped the ball not using the plot of the mathematics/physics training he had and the theory of cold fusion. It could have been a great plot. Instead they chose to rely on old movie ploys with a drunk, regretful old man running all over town looking less than intelligent and quiet dyslexic--but he can see the future. I think that they leaped over some places the movie needed to go to get to places the movie did not need to be.

The only good part is knowing Maggie will carry on his life's work that he was too drunk and preoccupied to focus on.

[–] shawnspo82 10 years ago

Have u ever lost anyone as close as a daughter or wife...did things you help create get used in the wrong way and turned into the atomic bomb that killed millons of people...he was to drunk and preoccupied? I would have been too if that would have happened to me....sorry u dont know your history and cant follow ghe stoRy line...this movie was great

[–] IvyTempleton 9 years ago

he was to drunk and preoccupied? I would have been too if that would have happened to me....

How sad for you.

When you are not concerned with succeeding, you can work with complete freedom.

[–] BlackDog123 10 years ago

I blame a lot of it on the direction - I know Danny Glover can act. But his "bitter old man" character was a caricature. His drunken behavior was over the top. Then there were the little things - multiple copies of the "Eternal Return" book floating around, conveniently RIGHT THERE in a store full of books. The shattering glass of the car window (car windows don't break like that they're made of shatterproof glass). I did watch the whole thing, but I started cleaning my apartment after half an hour or so. It couldn't hold my interest.

Something that really, really bothered me (and it happens in movies quite often, so it's not necessarily Donovan's Echo that set me off), but the secondary Asian character dies right away and nobody seems to give a crap. Just another minority in a minority role, dying solely as a plot device. It felt super heavy handed to me.

Anyhow, not the best but certainly not the worst. I'd give it a 4.5 or 5. It felt like a Lifetime movie and that's not what I was expecting.

They're coming to get you, Barbara!

[–] lulupalooza 10 years ago

@sargasm1 :

Something that really, really bothered me (and it happens in movies quite often, so it's not necessarily Donovan's Echo that set me off), but the secondary Asian character dies right away and nobody seems to give a crap. Just another minority in a minority role, dying solely as a plot device. It felt super heavy handed to me.

Yes, good point. But what do you mean by "secondary Asian"? Before being killed in the car accident, the only such character, Kaisha, was shown working in an Asian restaurant.

It was that or a dry cleaners when they went scouting for locations. :P

"Don't get chumpatized!" - The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007)