- Oh, Hayden Christensen, why have I seen all your movies? More importantly, why do I keep seeing them? Why is it that when they suck big, hairy, surgically-enhanced super balls it doesn’t stop me from seeing further projects you’re involved in? WHY? Oh, sigh, it’s because I love you for no apparent reason whatsoever. Will the supreme suckitude of this movie prevent me from seeing Jumper, even though the Jumper trailer looks even more ridiculous than Awake could ever be? No, no it will not. I suppose it’s because of people like me that you still have a a career. Mark Hamill must be really jealous.
- In reality, HC is not an atrocious actor. He’s not, he’s really not. Everyone can suck if they’re cast in a Star Wars movie. Even people who are normally on their game elsewhere completely fail in Star Wars. And thus, he sucked in Star Wars. (Let’s be honest: I love him in Star Wars.) HC’s problem is that he can be so good at the angst and rage aspects of a role, but since it’s hard to angst and rage through an entire film every single time you take on a new project, he’s going to have moments of awfulness. This movie was half raging angst and half… suck. So it evened out over all. He’s someone that is really appealing when he gets to cry on screen, and thus we now understand why I love Life As A House so much.
- Also, I think perhaps HC smokes at least twelve packs of cigarettes a day, holy mother of god. In some scenes, he’s got one of those voices that sounds as if he’s been smoking for forty years. He sounds like Marianne Faithfull.
- This movie is kind of hilariously ridiculous in that all the characters who are set up to be sympathetic and appealing turn out to be Evil Doctors of the Apocalypse and all the characters who are set up to be obnoxious and overbearing turn out to be Purveyors of Righteousness and Good Deeds. I actually didn’t mind that, really, but it was sort of hilarious every time out-of-body!HC would have a revelation about someone’s role reversal.
- The basic premise of this movie is that HC, business man extraordinaire and owner of half of New York City in one way or another, goes in for surgery except the anaesthesia doesn’t take and while he’s physically paralysed, he remains mentally alert and thus is technically awake while they begin to cut into him. Except he’s got this mysterious heart condition that requires him to have a heart transplant, because naturally if he’s going to be awake, it should be during a really complicated medical procedure. This is all fine and good but then it gets hilariously preposterous from then on. First we find out that one of the doctors on the surgery team can’t make it and instead we get Dr. Larry Lupin — I am not making this up — show up as a replacement anaesthesiologist. Lupin just happens to be a guy who DRINKS ON THE JOB — he keeps a flask in his SCRUBS — and so we’re meant to feel malice toward him because obviously he’s the guy who screws up properly putting the patient out. Then we find out that HC’s longtime friend, Dr. Terrence Howard, is actually planning on KILLING HIM, because the best place for a murder is either a battlefield or the operating table. Then we find out that HC’s newly acquired wife, his mother’s personal assistant Jessica Alba, is in on this murderous plan because she was actually SIGNIFICANTLY ATTACHED to Dr. Terrence Howard as a former member of his staff and due to several malpractice suits (SHOCKING!), they’re riddled with debt and the only possible way to deal with this is for her to craftily get married to a billionaire, kill him, and collect on his fortune. Then, after HC dies on the operating table, mama Lena Olin decides to TAKE HER OWN LIFE by overdosing on HC’s meds so that her heart may be used to bring him back to life. Through all of this, we get to experience an alternate dimension that people slide in and out of as they’re close to death, so that HC and Lena Olin can reminisce about the death of his abusive and coke-addled father while she explains to him why he needs to keep on living. This is all very ridiculous.
- Any excuse to see HC dress as well as he does in this movie is a welcome one, of course.
- Lena Olin’s “Please get the fuck away from me look” when Jessica Alba was hugging her in the waiting room was pretty hysterical.
- In case you’re wondering, Dr. Alcoholic Anaesthesiologist turns out to be one of the good guys in this. Somehow there are no repercussions for his inability to due his job or his drinking while at work because he helped blow the whistle on the immoral medical shenanigans being practiced by Dr. Terrence Howard and Company. Two wrongs apparently do make a right here.
- Also, Darth Vader needs a lung transplant, not a heart transplant.
Awake
I do not get the appeal of Jessica Alba.
IMDB Plot Synopsis Every year, one in 700 people wake up during surgery. When they planned her husband's murder, they never thought he'd be the one.