Flatliners (1990)

Short: A group of medical students get this great idea to flatline to see if there is life after death.

Ha! Ha! Ha! The first line is this movie is "Today is good day to die", and, frankly, if you have to see this film, you would be right. It's an awful movie littered with crass stereotypes. There's the beautiful but difficult female doctor (Julia Roberts), the nervous bookworm (Oliver Platt), the brilliant and talented young man who can't stand the establishment (Kevin Bacon), the guy who's got lots of money and even more attitude (Kiefer Sutherland), and a lothario (William Baldwin) for good measure.

Actually, that sounds like a pretty impressive cast on paper. However, on the screen, they are ho-hum at best. Don't get me wrong, Joel Schumacher (another director that I think has a thing for Sutherland - but who doesn't?) is pretty good director. I just don't know what he expected to do with Peter Filardi's script. Filardi also brought us The Craft, so I don't consider him a man of ability. Or taste. Or skill, for that matter. Alright, I just don't like his movies. Because they are awful. And they have unnatural close-ups. Those kinds of things can really throw a girl off.

What can I say? Good cast and fairly good director can't save a bad script. In fact, nothing can save a bad script. Not talented actors, not a quality director, not a powerful score, not an impressive soundtrack, not picturesque scenery. None of it means anything if a script isn't there. And everyone's sins coming back to haunt them now that they have died? Boring. Weird, but boring.

So there ya go, I wrote about yet another film I didn't enjoy. Don't see it, unless you like watching bad movies. If you are like me, you actually like to watch such movies, so you can make fun of them while you watch them. It's much more fun that way.