Godsend [Import]

I saw Godsend in theaters about a month ago since what I wanted to see was sold out. I though it would be ok though, and the trailers looked pretty good. It starts off with an excellent concept. Greg Kinear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos play parents who have a great life with their son, who is tragically hit by a car and killed. Robert DeNiro (the only real great thing the movie has going for it) plays a scientist who offers to secretly clone their son to make things the way they were before the accident. Sounds interesting right? Well yes, but it goes downhill from here. The concept of cloning is barely even explored in this movie, and there are scenes that still dont make since to me. Scenes that seem to have no purpose at all. Oh this movie could have been so much better but it never really answers anything. After the boy reaches age 8, he begins to see and hear strange things that all tie in to the son of the scientist who performed the cloning. This never comes together as a whole film, and the ending doesn't answer anything more than what you picked up on near the beginning of the film. It was not thought out well at all, and I regret paying to see this movie.

God this movie was B-O-R-I-N-G!!!!
The story seemed very interesting, but poorly executed.
They practically rush through the first half of the movie in terms of their original son Adam's death to the point that you didn't even feel for them when he died and they were at loss.
One scene you see him with the latest Nikes outside the store, the next a car, a black out, a phone call, a grave site, then Robert Deniro appears with an offer they can't refuse.
The Cloned Adam is 8 years old faster than you can say jack rabbit, and this is when all the problems begin....with the movie. The parent's never seemed to have aged 1 day...I'm guessing "Oil of Olay", Robert Deniro's character was underdeveloped, you didn't see him that much in the movie, and then they come up with a stupid twist to involve his character that we've seen before but better done in a twilight zone episode.
This movie didn't even fully delve into the whole cloning thing and it's other possibilites which would've made the movie alot more interesting to fill up alot of the space where nothing much was happening.
I am still trying to figure out what was the purpose of the attempted Robbery of Greg Kinnear's character at the beginning of the movie by those thugs...and then one of them saying "no leave him alone, he's the best teacher I've ever had?" It didn't link to anything in the film except to put some no name actors on screen for some time....????
This movie was a real sleeper....don't know why I spent my money in seeing it..I guess for the curiosity on them talking about a cloned boy, I guess similar to Artificial intelligence, that movie had personality this didn't.

I thought "Godsend" was going to be a science fiction thriller along the lines of Gattacca. I thought it might even be sort of a hybrid of "Gatticca" and "A.I." The "Gattacca" angle would deal with the ethical issues surrounding the manipulation of genetics to suit our own desires. The "A.I." angle would come into play because the couple is trying to REPLACE their dead son. This issue was explored far too briefly in "A.I." partly because the son was able to come back to life. Plus, "A.I." had many more issues to tackle because the child was non-human: the hazards of unconditional love, what we as humans owe to what we create, issues of man vs. machine, obseletism, etc. etc. etc. "Godsend" on the other hand deals only with humans, and some interesting issues are raised but never resolved, in favor of being just another evil child horror film. The first of these intriguing issues is one that has been raised countless times, which has a larger role in determining who we are, nature or nurture? The second is the far-fetched but no less interesting concept of cellular memory. The third question raised is what would happen if the replacement discovered he was only a replacement? Adam, (the clone) stumbles upon pictures of the other Adam but the need to explain the photos is forgotten as the clone once again succumbs to homicidal urges. The issue of destiny is also explored briefly, (the new Adam has many close calls with automobiles, the instrument of the previous Adam's demise.)

OK, I know some of you are saying, "Once you found out it was a horror film why didn't you just stay home? It's not the film's fault it wasn't what you wanted." To that I say, if it had to be horror, is it too much to ask that it be good horror? The film is purely a collection of scenes designed to make you jump, and I have to say that most of them accomplished that goal. Yet, I have cerebral palsy, which means along with many other nasty things, nature has cursed me with a hair-trigger startle reflex, and even with that working in the film's favor some of the "startle scenes" failed to hit their mark. This alone is testament to the film's gross inadequacy. And lets not forget the horrible writing and acting. If I had parents that said those cutesy-poo things to me, I would have thrown myself in front of that car on purpose. There was once a time when I would have asked, "what's DeNiro doing here?" but by now he should feel right at home.

The only thing Godsent about "Godsend" is the ending, by which I mean it has one.