I expected Knowing to suck bowling balls through a garden hose. It was not that bad. That may not say much.

First, of course, I consider Nicolas Cage to be the worst major film actor of the past 500 years. He can play exactly one character, a humble, family-loving, snivelling, slightly wise-cracker genius. He played it in Face/Off, in Con Air, in The Rock, in National Treasure, and here. Worse, he plays it badly. Now, you may say that a fan favorite like Keanu Reeves also can play only one character. But at least Reeves looks like he believes it. You can see Cage thinking, “Camera’s on! Now I gotta act! I’m acting!” Still, perhaps he is getting better. There were minutes at a stretch where he was actually mediocre.

Most of the six DOWNers who saw this thought that the first 2/3rds was good but that the ending sucked. For a long time it seemed to be a horror movie: the odd rocks, the crazy little girl, the numbers hidden for 50 years, the mysterious “whisperers.” I don’t like horror movies, so I felt everything except the ending sucked. There, they finally tried to explain things. EPIC FAIL! But at least it tried.

Where to start with the holes in this story? Maybe with the most incompetent aliens in movie history. They could only save people who could hear them telepathically. What, a star-faring civilization can’t figure out any way to communicate with non-telepaths? They land way in the boonies, the location encoded in a list of numbers that 50 years later just happens to end up in the hands of a mathematician who can decode it? (And why encode it?) They can’t just land on Boston Commons and scoop up a few dozen lucky people? With 50 years advance notice? The son gets angry about being treated as a child at one point. Why? Just to prove he’s not a bot? There’s no other apparent reason. The odd rocks? It turns out that... they’re just rocks! The plot holes in this movie make Swiss cheese look like battleship armor.

I’ll allow that the special effects were very good. The disasters were distressingly realistic (without being gory). If you want atmosphere without coherence, you can enjoy this movie.

For the definitive end-of-the-world story, look up Inconstant Moon by Larry Niven. It’s in his short story collection of that name and a couple other of his collections, and seems to be available on the net.

Now, Roger Ebert and some reviews on IMDB call this a great science fiction movie. I’ve been reading SF for thirty years. I know SF. SF is a friend of mine. And if this is great SF, I’m a monkey’s uncle, aunt, twin boy offspring, and second cousin once removed.

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