[Review] Reign Over Me

When you watch a movie as disappointing as Reign Over Me, you can understand why the actors chose it: the plot has a lot of potential, there are some terrific scenes, blah blah.  Unfortunately, this is one of those movies that lays out an excellent premise but can't figure out an effective resolution.

In short, Reign Over Me is pretty crappy.  Actually, Becks' feelings about it were much stronger in the negative direction than mine (but hey, she chose it).  

I'm going to ruin parts of the movie, but hopefully you aren't going to see it anyway.  It goes like this: Don Cheadle's character (Johnson) runs into his former college roommate (Adam Sandler's character) in NYC, but Sandler doesn't respond.  They run into each other again, and Johnson realizes that Sandler doesn't remember him, and freaks out when his family is mentioned...probably due the the post-traumatic stress disorder of losing his wife and three daughters on 9/11.  The two men eventually forge a friendship, while Cheadle deals with a host of problems at work and home.  Sounds okay on the surface, right? 

The problem is, the movie resolves itself in the most clichéd, boring way possible -- to the point that you find yourself saying, "Oh no...they aren't going to have Sandler and Cheadle's crazy stalker become romantically involved at the end, are they?  Oh god no...they are!  Shit!  What the fuck!"  The final courtroom scene, the decision-making by the involved parties, and the likelihood off someone suffering the issues than Sandler is finding someone to fall in love with while at the same time finally confronting such an incapacitating illness is about as credible as a Buzz Lightyear autobiography. 

The final eighth of the film was predictable in the sense of a slowly-developing car crash: you hope that what you're watching isn't going to play itself out a certain way, but you're pretty sure it's going to, and nobody will be happy when it does.  Except a car crash doesn't take more than two hours.  A typically good performance by Cheadle and a surprisingly convincing performance from Sandler go completely wasted thanks to the avalanche of sucktitude at the end.  Bottom line: One and one-half Obsidian reels for this one.  Just skip it.

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