Being There (1979) and Birth (2004)

Plot 1: After the death of his employer, Chance the Gardener (Peter Sellers) is turned out of the estate, which he has never left before. Through series of happy accidents, he falls in with a wealthy family (Shirley Maclaine and Melvyn Douglas) and gains the ear of the president (Jack Warden).

Plot 2: At her engagement party, Anna (Nicole Kidman) is approached by 10 year old boy, Sean (Cameron Bright), who claims to be Anna's dead husband.

No pictures today, folks. These movies aren't worth the effort.

Inspired by two recent contests on Slate, I finally found a way I can blog about these two movies. Here goes.

Have you ever been so thrown off by the premise of a movie that you can't possibly buy a single thing that follows? As a dutiful movie goer, I've swallowed down many an questionable pill to make it through an otherwise palatable movie. I've also suspended my disbelief when the films were premised around something as bizarre as a six foot talking rabbit.

But these two films pushed my limits. Both came highly recommended by two very different sources, so I gave them each a go. I shouldn't have.

Forget about what happens to Chance after he leaves the estate because it didn't matter to me one bit. The trailer tells me that Louise (Ruth Attaway), the housekeeper, is the only person Chance has ever known besides the old man. She raised him, she didn't teach him how to read and write, she cooked his meals, she did his laundry, she somehow instilled the virtues of gardening in him.

So how I can be reasonably expected to believe that Louise would simply leave Chance at the estate to fend for himself? She just leaves him there. "I'm going to leave now, Chance," she says, and she does! What is that? What does she think is going to happen to him?

After this happened, I could barely tolerate sitting through the rest of this off-kilter comedy. I just kept waiting for Louise to realize how stupid, selfish, and cruel she was being and come back for Chance, but she never does. Sorry, but nothing on this earth could make me get into this movie after something so implausible occurred.

The second equally unreasonable premise is easier to sum up: She believes him. Anna tries to deny it, but she believes Sean as soon as he opens his little mouth.

To which I say, are you kidding? I could have gotten into it if she was all, "You're a crazy kid!" from the get-go but then Sean won her over, but this? WTF, mates?

Also, Anne Heche with long brown hair threw me off a bit, too. Not as much, though.

I suppose I should give both these movies a rating since I watched them all the way through. I can't. I didn't believe anything about them because I couldn't see my way through the first twenty minutes of either one. I had a complete disconnect from the movies from the word go.

Feel free to throw out any movies with implausible premises that you couldn't deal with either.