A Comedic Host

 Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog full of useless information about films! I'm the ever effervescent critic TheCinemaChick and I watch a lot of movies because I can. Now that I'm back and...well...I'm the same as I was before...I've got a lot to catch up on. For instance, let's talk about the latest box office bomb, “The Host”.

I can honestly say this one shocked me. Because it's from Twilight author Stephanie Meyer, I thought the Twi-hards would come in flocks to see this one. To my surprise, this movie has done horrible. I'm not saying I wanted this movie to do well, but I certainly didn't want it to fail. I have read the book and while it's not the best thing I've ever read, the concept is interesting.

Once again, anything I say about the plot is not a spoiler because the book has been out for a while. “The Host” along with hundreds of other wonderful books are available for you right now at your local library.

Basically, it's sort of a post apocalyptic story where aliens have come and taken over the planet but there are a few humans left. And these aliens are called souls, which can be implanted into bodies. This story focuses on Wanderer, who has been around for a while and seen several different worlds. She comes to Earth and is implanted into Melanie. Now Melanie had been part of the resistance, but when she was caught, she tried to kill herself instead of becoming one of them. The Keepers use Wanderer to tap into Melanie's memories in order to find the other humans. However, to their surprise, Melanie didn't die. She resists at every opportunity. Finally, they escape the Keepers and rejoin the other humans, who happen to live in this huge underground cave in the middle of a desert.

Wanderer is taken in and basically held hostage even though Melanie comes through every so often to try and explain what happens. And this is about the time I started hating the book. It turns right back into Twilight. It's a four sided love triangle. Melanie and Wanderer share a body and Melanie's boyfriend still loves her but there comes a rival to his affections. Jared loves Melanie but Ian falls in love with Wanderer, who they affectionately call Wanda. Talk about falling in love with a girl for her personality. This drags on for a while, almost painstakingly slow. When Jamie, Melanie's little brother, has a severe infection, she risks exposing herself in order to save him.

Blah blah blah...attempt to kill her, she is accepted as a part of the community, she teaches them how to remove souls from bodies...I'm really summarizing now. This book is over six hundred pages, so bear with me. Basically, it ends like the Twilight series. Everyone is happy, everyone gets the person they love and there is perfect resolution to all conflict.

However, this story ends with Jared, Ian, Melanie and Pet (which for some reason is what the call the body Wanda is now in, since the host body was brain dead and technically Wanda saved it...don't ask) meeting another group of humans. This group happens to have a soul in their clan and they discover not all souls want to take over. Burns (the soul they meet at the end) says something about how he thought he was the only one who changed teams. He says “Strange world?” to which Pet replies “The strangest” and it ends.

There, I just saved you 619 pages and like two hours of time. Thank me later.

Now, the film isn't a bad adaptation. It's actually fairly faithful given that a lot of stuff is left out. Seriously they barely scratch the surface. For what its worth, it isn't bad, but it suffered from a lot of major issues. The biggest issue of all was the script. Whoever wrote it clearly did not care at all because it was just so mediocre and bland. There wasn't really anything memorable about it so basically, nothing stuck with me.

“The Host” is basically tofu. It's there but there's just no flavor.

What makes it worse is that it is unintentionally hilarious. This film is not a comedy. It's meant to be science fiction and action and drama with a touch of romance. What we actually get is a romance set in a cave with really bad dialogue. And sadly, about...80% of this movie is just dialogue. Most of the run time just has the characters talking or sitting somewhere. There isn't much action. It's not even visually appealing. Since most of the film is in this cave, it's dark. The eye gets bored, then suddenly its outside for like two minutes. The visual monotony just gets to be too much and I stopped caring.

You want to know how boring this movie is? I fell asleep. I drank a cherry icee and slept. I had to finish off Fry's coke icee in order to stay awake. Then, at the most inappropriate moments, I was cracking up. Like I said, this was not intended to be a comedy but it was so bad that it's funny. Basically, the acting is as good as Kristen Stewart. Sure, they're supposed to show emotion but its just not there. You start wondering if they are even capable of doing so.

If you're a huge Stephanie Meyer fan, you'll enjoy this. Otherwise, don't bother. It's Twilight in a different package. Expect to see this one hitting the DVD shelves sooner than planned.

I'm TheCinemaChick and I learned I do not like blood orange Greek yogurt.