The Happening

The Happening
Running Time 91 minutes
Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel and John Leguizamo

There’s a moment in the boring, brain-dead new M. Night Shyamalan film The Happening when Mark Wahlberg turns to the camera, trying to suppress a grin, and asks, “Can this really be happening?” I ask the same question every week, but it just gets worse.

It’s not a good sign when a director casts Mr. Wahlberg, a ruddy rapper-turned-actor who looks like a choirboy selling crack in the apse, as a science teacher pondering the mystery of why honeybees are disappearing from coast to coast.  read more »

M. Night Shyamalan takes a fair amount of crap in the press and with audiences these days. He admitted himself in last week’s New York Times interview that he’s known solely as “‘… the guy who makes the scary movies with a twist.’” He will undoubtedly be forever followed around by people saying "I see dead people" thanks to his greatest success, The Sixth Sense in 1999. Some people liked his follow-ups Unbreakable, Signs and The Village well enough. But remember how fast the knives came out after his last film, The Lady in the Water? We’re guessing that’s going to be nothing compared to what’s sure to come after The Happening.  read more »

Holy Panda! Kung Fu Panda, the animated film from DreamWorks about a chubby, slacking, would-be Kung Fu fighter voiced by Jack Black, took the top spot last weekend, raking in over $60 million. That’s more than those boozy Sex and the City gals, who got bumped to fourth place. The film set a record for the best opening ever for a non-sequel DreamWorks ’toon, and comes in third place all time after Shrek and Shrek 2. Could the weekend’s back-breaking heat have helped fill up all those seats, we wonder?

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