Mutant Reviewers from Hell do "The Thirteenth Floor"

Mutant Reviewers from Hell do
The Thirteenth Floor
"Hey! What'd you do to the world?"

Summary Capsule
Man dips into VR to figure out a murder mystery

DnaError's Rating: More effective then valium
DnaError's Review: The sucess and utter hipness of the Matrix created a flood of existentialist scifi flicks, all struggling to answer the question "what will people pay 7.50 plus popcorn to see?" The answer, according to this movie, is that people want to see deadeye actors stare into space while ruining a perfectly good idea. The concept is good enough, scientists on the aforementioned level create a VR simulation of 1930s L. A only to have it *dramatic music* start to kill people. My beef isn't with the idea, it's with how it's done. The "investigation" is as tedious and dry, the dialogue in inane, with grand revelations greeted with "Who cares!" Aside from being mind-numbingly dull, It makes about as much sense as a Voyager episode. For this movie to work your disbelief will have to be suspended into the Ionosphere via a large pulley system.

Not going into the movie's thief of every scifi movie since the early 80s (Drecker called, he wants his set back), I'm moving on to The 13th Floor's very liberal use of pauses. Example:

John: Martha, I....................................

Martha: John, do....................

John: Get......the milk

Martha:....we.....are.......out.

Now, wasn't that THRILLING? The director must have thought so cause in the time it takes one pause to end; whole nations have risen and fallen with the tide of time. The actors, (none worth mentioning except for Vincent D'Onofrio, cause if I don't Clare will skin me alive. ) sound like mildly retarded Sony toys waiting for a battery change.

It's not a complete waste, the cinematography is well done, Art-directed shot with Gattaca-like with single color schemes. And if you need a sleep aid and the doctors took away your happy pills, I could see watching this again. Then again I see grubs with the faces of Kitty Carlise coming after me in the night.

The Scoop

1999
Rated R
Sci-Fi . Mystery
Director
Josef Rusnak
Starring
Craig Bierko
Armin Mueller-Stahl
Gretchen Mol
Vincent D'Onofrio
Didja Notice?
In the 1937 world, the old man (Fuller) refers to World War I. There had been no World War II yet, thus World War I should have been referred to as "The Great War," but since the world was actually a simulation, this is just an error in the simulation.
The front page of a newspaper shows the date as Monday, June 21, 2024; in the year 2024, June 21 will fall on a Friday.