REVIEW - Seven Pounds (or, Will Smith Wants Himself An Oscar: The Movie)

Regular readers will be taken aback to see that on a day when both Benjamin Button and Valkyrie were released, I instead went to see the latest from our buddy Will "Aw Hell Naw" Smith. While I agree that I should probably have my geek license suspended, there were circumstances, guys.

So yeah, I saw this movie and I don't want to write about it too much. Will Smith plays a guy who has A HORRIBLE SECRET AND A DEADLY JELLYFISH. Rosario Dawson plays a woman with a horse for a dog (figuratively), a defective heart (literally) and a broken antique printing press (also literally). Woody Harrelson (who really doesn't get enough work, in my opinion) plays a blind vegetarian meat salesman. There are other people in this film also, and they all have problems that might be solvable if Will Smith...I'm not going to give it away, but there is, not a plot twist but a twist of the film's pacing that sort of manufactures what I guess could be termed a PLOT TWIST (all caps please), and if you haven't figured out what it might be, you need to see more movies.

I think I know how this film came about. Basically, Will Smith got a writer, sat him or her down, and told them that he wanted to win an Oscar so come up with a story that is super emotional and will allow him to gain some Serious Actor Points with critics and, hopefully, Academy voters. His is an affecting performance, and he may yet get a nomination, but it would have to be a weak field in my opinion for him to win. There might be some awards in there for the supporting cast, though.

Anyway, it's not a bad movie. It's pretty sad, especially at the end when everybody gets their problems solved except for Barry Pepper's character, I guess. He's another guy who needs to get more work. I'm really not the target audience for this sort of thing (not enough robots), but there are worse things I could have done with my evening, I guess. This is me trying to talk myself out of feeling bad for not seeing Valkyrie, basically.

Also, I thought maybe the film was called Seven Pounds because that's how much the human head weighs (or at least that's what that annoying kid from Jerry Maguire said), but if there was any explanation or reference to the title within the dialogue of the film, I must have missed it entirely. This is very possible.

So yeah, if you really like getting bummed out and wondering if a movie has the balls to go through with what its story sets out to do, and you find it believeable that Will Smith plays a guy who went to MIT, I guess it might be worth a look.