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110 of 122 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not bad if you first calibrate your expectations, October 3, 2004
I've heard the critics and I've read the viewer feedback and I'm still scratching my head. The most common thing I've heard was that people expected it to be a different kind of movie and were let down at what it turned out to be. Obviously these people either didn't see the trailer or didn't give it any thought.
The trailer sets up the premise, and the only way someone seeing it could imagine it playing out would be as either: 1) a psychological thriller, 2) an alien abduction movie, 3) a supernatural thriller. Given what's revealed in the trailers, those are pretty much the only options. If you go to the movies often, you probably saw the trailers more than once, in which case it doesn't take any great deductive powers to figure out exactly what it's going to be.
From this point on, there may be spoilers!
OK, a bit more on the trailer(s)... We see that Julianne Moore's character has lost a son and that people around her have apparently forgotten he ever existed. Next we see that pictures have been altered. At this point, the options are still open. Next we see her ripping the wallpaper and revealing to Dominic West's character that he, too, had a child who apparently died. A few moments later, we see her in official custody with him shouting through the window that he remembers. Since we have two people with shared memories of people who weren't supposed to have ever existed, the psychological thriller plot line is eliminated. This has to be some sort of conspiracy, whether supernatural, alien or pod people. The shots in the trailer aren't creepy enough for a supernatural plot, so that pretty much leaves some sort of aliens. Duh!
Knowing this, I went to see it with suitably calibrated expectations. As with all such plots, there were holes and lapses in logic, but surprisingly fewer than I would have expected. Julianne Moore gives a typically excellent performance and the other parts are well cast and performed. I must admit my wife had the nature of Gary Sinese's character nailed while I was still undecided about him.
Altogether, not a great flick, but certainly a lot better than many people have given it credit for. I enjoyed it, my wife stayed awake through it (a major endorsement!), and I left without wishing for my money or 96 minutes back.
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43 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
What is forgotten is the great opening story premise, January 25, 2005
I got really anxious when I put in the DVD for "The Forgotten" and was given an option of watching the original theatrical release or the extended version with an alternate ending. Given what I knew about this 2004 film, to wit, a mother is the only one who remembers that she had a son, I was worried that the two endings might represents completely opposite resolutions to the situation. Fortunately, that is not the case, and I think the alternate ending is slightly stronger than the original (actually, to a great extent they are pretty compatible). But the proliferation of alternative endings on DVDs worries me, because if you are not sure where your movie is going to end when you start making it I think you are in serious trouble. Besides, I have horrid visions of the alternate endings for "Gone With the Wind" and "Casablanca."
"The Forgotten" is a film with an interesting idea, but the trailer gives away a bit too much so that you have no doubt as to which way you are supposed to be leaning on this one. Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore), has been mourning the death of her 9-year-old son, Sam, for over a year (she can do months, days, and hours). Sam was killed in an airplane crash, along with nine other kids. Telly is seeing a psychiatrist, Dr. Munce (Gary Sinise), but resisting treatment, the goal of which is for her to spend less time each day looking at Sam's toys and photographs of the boy. Then she comes home one day and finds everything is gone and her husband, Jim (Anthony Edwards) is insisting she never had a child but had suffered a miscarriage.
The idea of a woman who has created a fictional child who ends up getting killed is rather compelling (even if you are suddenly thinking "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"), but that is not what is going on here. This is one of those movies were a mom, against great odds, fights for her child. Part of the problem with "The Forgotten" is that the odds against which Tally is fighting might be the greatest in human history. While this is also an interesting idea, it is played out against such monumental odds that the point Gerald Di Pego's script is trying to make about the power of a mother's love gets a bit lost.
Tally is able to enlist a couple of allies, Ash Correll (Dominic West), an ex-hockey player who does not remember the daughter Telly insists he had, and Detective Ann Pope (Alfre Woodard), who is suspicious of the feds chasing a crazy women and who finds it hard to believe that two people would be suffering parallel delusions. But the initial flaw in this film is that we know Tally is not crazy from the start and I really believe that ambiguity needs to be a bigger part of the first act of the film. The longer the film cuts both ways, the stronger this sort of story tends to be. But director Joseph Ruben apparently does not recognize this is the smart way to go.
The major flaw with this film is that once we get to THE EXPLANATION as to what is going on, your awe over the sheer magnitude of the power and magnitude of what is going on is mitigated by the simple question of "why go to all the bother?" After all, when you think about the final scene, it sure seems like a bit much for a statistical aberration, and that is without even getting into the whole question of how it is done (not that any explanation would be forthcoming, but you can appreciate the idea).
This is too bad because not only is the idea of a woman inventing a fictional child rather interesting, Moore provides an anguished performance as this particular mother, capturing both the pain of loss and the power of motherhood, and West certainly gives his role a nice little twist from what we have come to expect in such films that throw two people together. But primarily "The Forgotten" is a film that wastes several talented performers. Most of Anthony Edwards scenes are in the trailer, Sinise has to wait most of the film for a scene worthy of his talents, and "The Forgotten" is a movie that literally throws away Alfre Woodward.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Good acting, poor story, November 18, 2006
This movie had a halfway decent set up and good acting, but the storyline deteriorated as the secrets were revealed and the ending made no sense. That's 91 minutes of my life that I will never get back, honestly my time would have been better spent sitting in an empty room staring off into space, at least then I could pass it off as meditating.
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