My Godsend Rview

Let me start this off by saying that I watched movies on TV all day Sunday in between bouts of hating myself. One of which was Godsend. It wasn't very good at all, and for the duration of this sentence, "wasn't very good at all" really means terrible piece of *beep* movie starring yet another kid that knows how to crack an evil smile."

So, on with the crappy movie itself. It opens with Paul (Greg Kinear) running through downtown of some random city with a present. He can't get a cab so he runs through a dark alley. He obviously gets jumped by two guys because it's a dark alley and he looks like a tool. One of the guys notices that the man he's mugging is Paul, "the best teacher [he] ever had," and tells his boy to leave him alone because "hes cool." Then he apologized to Paul and skipped off down the alley with his gang-bangin' buddy to rob someone else (as long as their victim doesn't turn out to be the guy at McDonald's that always hooks them up with extra fries - hes cool too). This is a huge point to the movie. It shows us that 1) Paul lives in a crappy neighborhood, 2) he's a biology teacher, and 3) he's such a damned good biology teacher that the students who respect him the most are stealing presents from people in an alley at knife-point. What a great teacher. The kid honestly says "He taught me everything I needed to know." So you learned about mugging people in high school biology class? Wow, and all I learned in high school biology was that boys have a penis and girls have a vagina. I never once learned anything about life on the streets and how to steal presents. I think they took this scene from the movie they were originally going to make, which was about a tough teacher in the 'hood helping kids see they can grow up to do anything as long as they believe in themselves and unicorns enough. Because, you know, that's never been done before, especially not by Jim Belushi in the 80's.

When Paul gets home, it's his kid's eighth birthday party, complete with a precious little vanilla cake in the form of an 8. His kid is named Adam. The present he got him was a red jacket with white sleeves that probably had his name embroidered on it to make sure the other kids at school knew the name of the person they've been dipping head-first into the toilet. Post birthday party madness, Jessie (Rebecca Roman Stamos), his wife, argues with him about how she wants to move out of the city because he got a job offer somewhere else for more money. Paul doesn't want to because he considers doing anything other than teaching hoodlums in the ghetto biology for peanuts "selling out." And maybe he's right, but I don't *beep* care. She then says, "Oh, it's for Adam, not us." You lying, gold-digging bitch. She's a photographer, which really means "housewife with a camera" so you know she doesn't make any money at all.

The next day, Jessie takes Adam to get him a basketball and the ugliest red sneakers ever made by sweatshop children. While she's paying, he goes outside to play with his basketball next to a construction zone in the middle of a dead-locked street. The traffic is not moving at all. She wanders away from the register, while paying, because she'd rather watch her kid try to bounce a ball and *beep* it up than actually sign her credit card receipt and not hold up the line. *beep* bitch. Well, Adam can't dribble because he's a pussy and the ball bounces off of his ugly red sneakers into the construction zone. As he frolics past the barrier to get his ball, some guy on a bike rides into traffic (that wasn't moving at all three seconds prior) and some guy in a Camaro does what everyone else does when they're about to hit some jerk on a bike: he hits the gas, jumps over a conveniently-placed dirt ramp, and slams into Adam who stands there like an idiot while the impending doom flies right at his face instead of making any sort of attempt at getting out of the way. What a jackass. So now he's dead. Unfortunately we'll never know why a car that was literally sitting idle in traffic suddenly had the speed to get airborn off of a dirt ramp. My theory is that he wanted to run the bike over, and who else wouldn't?

Anyway, it's now night time and Paul finally gets home from work. No one's there, so he checks the messages and it's from Jessie saying that Adam is a pancake. Since the accident happened during the afternoon and now it's nighttime, it makes me wonder why he didn't know earlier. Didn't his stupid *beep* wife think to call him at his job? I know he's a teacher in the inner city and the schools so poor that the student have to pee in a bucket, but I'm sure there's at least one phone in there somewhere, even if it's an old-timey crank phone, and a dead kid is kind of an emergency.

At the funeral arrangements for Adam, Richard (Robert De Niro) approaches them and talks about how he's a scientist and once had Jessie in one of his classes in college. Remember, Jessie's a photographer, not a scientist. Makes perfect sense, because obviously he's going to remember one girl he had in a big class ten years ago that didn't major in science and probably never even showed up for class because she was too busy covering up her oral herpes with makeup. So yeah, she probably *beep* him for a B, because god damn she wanted that prestigious photography degree. Whatever. He takes them out to lunch and tells them he can clone Adam using a DNA sample, basically fertilizing one of her eggs with Adam DNA. Paul gets pissed and storms out, but not before Richard gives Jessie his card. After much pointless arguing, they decide to sever ties with everyone they've ever known (much to everyone's dismay, I'm sure) and move upstate near Robert's facility where he can clone Adam. Paul gets a job at the local high school, Robert buys them a house with a dark room, and the cloning procedure is a complete success. Wheeeeeee.

Once again, they name this kid Adam. It's the same actor, but now he has short hair to make sure the audience doesn't think the rest of the movie is one long flashback because the audience is stupid. It's his eighth birthday party, and they have the same *beep* #8 cake as they gave their dead kid, only this one is chocolate instead of vanilla. This is to symbolize that this kid is evil and the director is a racist. Otherwise why couldn't the vanilla cake be for the evil child? Also, the only black people in the movie so far were thieves and the one black lady near the end of the movie is insane and an almost-murderer, but I'll get to that later. So yeah, the director's a racist.

Paul makes some stupid comments to Jessie about how their new Adam is exactly like their dead Adam. Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's probably because he's a *beep* CLONE. Paul also gives an example. He says that new Adam loves his stegosaur toy as much as the old Adam. I'm pretty sure that's because you gave the new Adam the same *beep* stegosaur that the old Adam had, and all kids love dinosaurs. Remember a little show from when you were a kid called Denver the Last Dinosaur? How about the action-packed space marine adventures of Dinosaucers? Don't lie, everyone had the Triceratops laser soldier toy thing. So Paul shouldn't be amazed that the clone loves a dinosaur he was basically programmed to love by his own stupid parents just like the original.

After that argument, Paul and Jessie try to make another clone the old fashioned way and we almost get to see Rebecca Roman Stamos naked. But not quite.

At this point, the Adam clone (who I will refer to as "ultra Adam" from now on, and I'll also refer to the dead Adam as "zombie Adam" because zombies *beep* rule) has lived longer than zombie Adam and he starts having bizarre dreams about a kid that looks like him wearing a red coat with white sleeves setting a school on fire and being laughed at by other creepy school children. You know, stuff that zombie Adam never did. Paul and Jessie ask Richard what's going on, and he says that it's only night terrors (COBRAS!!!) and that zombie Adam didn't live this long so ultra Adam is moving into uncharted territory. Apparently he's an explorer, but I think I missed the part of the movie where Adam finds Atlantis (it was in his pants).

Ultra Adam starts acting weird around people and having hallucinations. There's one where he imagines smashing a hammer into some random woman's skull (I'm pretty sure that in the credits they list her as "woman getting ruined by hammer), there's one where he sets stuff on fire, and then there's a time when he finds some random shed in the woods while ignoring Paul. Paul follows him in there and Ultra Adam is acting like he's hypnotized. Paul starts thinking he remembers his old life, Richard says it's impossible, and there are about 400 more scenes that happen like this. At one point, Richard calls ultra Adam Zachary and that makes the little bastard listen. This confuses only Paul because Jessie is a stupid *beep* bitch. Wackiness ensues, but afterwards Ultra Adam still acts weird and has more bad hallucinations of stuff that never happened to Zombie Adam and Richard still says it's night terrors and he doesn't know who this mysterious Zachary is.

Ultra Adam takes a bath one night and keeps staring at the door. He hears some weird noises and gets out to investigate. The shower curtain magically gets pulled off by itself, and when ultra Adam looks in the tub, a ghost kid jumps up from under the curtain and is being suffocated. Ultra Adam runs away and a random adult-sized slimy arm that came from the totally-out-of-context zone grabs him. And I don't think the adult arms is supposed to make sense, because it doesn't at all, even compared to how nothing else in this crappy movie makes much sense. Ultra Adam imagined it anyway because he's a soulless clone and must be burned at the stake before Satan enters his groin and makes him do terrible things like burning down schools or getting his own sitcom with an ex-Friends cast member. Then Paul and Richard have another argument about night terrors. Retard. If ultra Adam was my kid, I'd start following him around constantly to make sure he wasn't eating the paint off the walls, and I'd carry a big stick to whack him with in case he was eating said wall paint. Anyway, it's around this point that this new kid (whose name I don't remember but it doesn't matter because I hate him, the little *beep* comes to school and acts like an *beep* From the first time you see this little bastard, you know he's going to die. He's strutting around the schoolyard in his bright yellow coat acting like tough nut because apparently the director didn't realize that any kid wearing that coat is going to be tooled on constantly in any normal school.

I feel like I should point out that no one should ever make a movie about kids if they have no idea what it's like being one. I know everyone's been a kid at some point, but they either forget what it was like, they were home schooled and are therefore socially retarded, or they've been living in fantasy land their whole lives. The hardass kid challenges ultra Adam to a swing jump competition, which I was hoping to be dumbass director for "sword fight." Nope. It was literally a swing jump competition. Just like what real bullies do. *beep* stealing lunch money, let's see who can swing the highest! Suddenly this movie turns into an 80's movie for three second while the two of them try to jump the farthest off the swingset to win the title of "lord of the playground." All this part of the movie did for me was make me wish I was watching an 80's movie instead, like Rad. After a few swings, Adam starts spitting on the bully kid and his sycophantic cronies, jumps off the swing when some dumb bitch yells at him and almost breaks his genetically modified legs, and then very radly spits in the bitch's face. Believe me, the *beep* had it coming. Then they have a parent teacher conference about how ultra Adam's *beep* up in the head and the other kids are afraid of him, as they should be, for he will one day eat them all.

Paul goes to Richard and flips out at him. Since Paul's a high school biology teacher, he realizes that Richard "turned on" certain genes in the DNA used for the clone. Like a light switch. No, that makes no sense. The writer doesn't know what DNA is. Paul thinks ultra Adam remembers things that happened to Zombie Adam despite the fact that Ultra Adam turns into Zachary when he's zoning out and remembers nothing of zombie Adam. Who is Zachary? The movie tries to explain at the end and it makes no sense how it could be possible. I'll get to that later, not that you're still reading at this point. You know what? I'm sick of describing the plot.

Here's what happens: it turns out that Zachary Clark is Richard's son. He was a psycho. Paul interviewed Zachary's old babysitter that he found through impossibly dumb luck. She's a crazy black lady that was convinced he was evil. She tried to suffocate him in the tub but pussed out and since the director is a racist, probably went downstairs to make some fried chicken and watch Richard Pryor on the TV. She also talks exactly how a guy who never met black people thinks they do. I was waiting for her to start saying "massa." Zachary eventually burned his school down because kids made fun of him out of fear. Because, you know, you make fun of people you're terrified of. Then he killed his mom in his basement with a hammer, like in ultra Adam's flashback (and I think she won an award for her excellent performance - oh, I mean she's married to the director's retarded cousin and that's why she was in the movie), set the house on fire, and started playing again.

He apparently dies in the fire. Richard wasn't around because he was working on cloning at his hospital. Since his procedure wasn't perfected yet, he couldn't clone Zachary. Instead, he took zombie Adam's DNA to create ultra Adam, and through some miracle of make-believe physics-defying science, he programmed the cell to have Zachary's personality after the kid turned eight so he could see his son again. Because that could happen. Memories and
everything. I'd be willing to give the movie the benefit of the doubt if ultra Adam only remembered zombie Adam's life, but screw you for thinking anyone would believe he remembers the life of a kid he never met not to mention a kid who's DNA was not used to make him. I'm no biologitologist or anything, but I don't think you can add genes called "that time I burned down the school" or "that time I destroyed my mom's skull with a hammer" into some other random kid's DNA.

During all of this remedial detective work, ultra Adam turns into crazy Adam, clubs the bully kid in the head, and then drowns him in the river. And it was labeled as an accidental death. Paul then threatens to tell the press about what they did, but Richard talks him out of it because Paul's a pussy and would also be responsible. Me: That makes no sense whatsoever. What the .... are they talking about? Pandora's Box? Wait - if De Niro didn't have Zachary DNA, how the *beep* did he give ultra Adam Zachary's memories? Gilligan's Island is more feasible than that.

Meanwhile, ultra Adam finds pictures of Zombie Adam, Jessie tries to explain (poorly because she's a stupid bitch that left pictures of her dead son the clone doesn't know about in a box out in the open in the basement, not locked or anything; dumbass), and he runs off. Then we cut to a clip of Paul running through the woods, and normally when you see someone running like this, it ends in hugs and everyone gets an award. Then, Jessie finds ultra Adam in the shed in the woods, and he almost axes her in the face but Paul comes in the nick of time to save her. Then, out of nowhere, it's six months later, they've moved, and ultra Adam gets pulled into the closet by Zachary. Then the movie just kind of ends, and I thank god I didn't actually pay to see this tripe.

Their son killed some kid and nothing ever happens with it. We don't find out what happened with Richard, and we don't find out what the *beep* he was talking about with his Pandora's Box rant. Nothing. It just ends with the kid still loony. In reading reviews of this movie, people kept bringing up some twist. I guess the twist is that the director can make a movie without an ending and still get it released into theaters. What a gyp. The movie sucked so bad. In all of ultra Adam's hallucinations, he saw a kid in zombie Adam's red coat setting fires and whacking people with hammers, and it even looked like zombie Adam's face in half of them. He was even wearing zombie Adam's ugly red shoes. But it wasn't zombie Adam. And, how could he be remembering Zachary's life when he wasn't made from Zachary's DNA. You can't just mess with some genes to give a kid memories of son.