...NEXT!

To be fair, they practically named the movie Don't Waste Your Time, but regardless I went and saw Next with Jakey today. I was braver than I was wise. From the trailer* I knew a number of things.

1. Nicolas Cage is in a position to wipe out the horror that was Ghost Rider by creating something even worse, effectively eclipsing his last catastrophe.
   
2. Julianne Moore is hard-up for cash and it pisses her off. This comes through in her performance.
   
3. There is a stylist in Hollywood propagating the Tom Hanks "DaVinci Code" hairstyle. This person is probably the anti-Christ.
   

The movie, if it deserves the title, starts with Nicolas Cage working as a magician. Why in God's name a guy trying to lay low would seek a job as public as a magician is a question for another blog post. He gets on stage and begins his act, as stilted and wooden as a poorly programmed robot making an awkward stab at humanity. Basically, he plays Nicolas Cage.

This lasts all of five minutes until (inexplicably) the FBI tries to grab him to fight French terrorists who (inexplicably) want to detonate a nuclear bomb**. He chooses to run, but before he can manage it he has to meet and woo Jessica Biel who (inexplicably) changes her footwear three times for the same outfit over a course of four hours.

Next was passably decent (in a National Treasure make-fun-of-every-scene kind of way) until the ending, which I shall now ruin for you. As it turns out at the end when he fails to prevent the nuclear bomb from detonating, it's all been an elaborate vision of what may happen.

This is bullshit. I'd rather a movie do something interesting (like blow up eight million people because our hero chose to save the girl) than pull a Dallas. The only saving grace of the movie was that it was a movie in which Jessica Biel was not only terrible, but actually flaunted her crippling lack of acting ability. I figure one more of these, she's got to do nudity just to stay in the game.

Here's hoping.

* If you watched the trailer, and didn't laugh when Jessica needlessly said "You can see things before they happen" you are no longer my friend.
** Seriously, they never explain why they want to blow this bomb. Not even a little exposition. Not even a simple "finally the American Pig-Dogs will pay for calling them 'freedom fries'" line.