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Saturday 19th January 2013

I would much rather the film had revolved around one of the (vast majority of) people who took the news that the world would end in three weeks by getting out there and having fun, taking drugs and blowing stuff up. Why did it have to focus on a man who was too moral and sad to behave in that way? And yet then ends up falling in love with a woman half his age anyway, proving that he really wanted to be bad but just didn't have the bollocks. He had the chance to kill Keira Knightley's very annoying kooky character and have no repercussions, but has sex with her instead. The bloody idiot.

As with Ruby Sparks it would be much more fun to see an immoral man granted this power rather than a wishy-washy sort of good, but sort of pathetic one. Groundhog Day pitches it (almost) perfectly by choosing Bill Murray to be the unlikely recipient of a super-power/curse (even if it ruins it by having him learn something about himself!) and I feel that there was a better film about what would happen to the world if there were only 21 more tomorrows. I suspect anarchy and revenge would trump love and coming to terms with ourselves, but it's hard to know. Would anyone stay at work? I don't think so, though some do in the film - including a man at a shop who rather short-sightedly sells some window cleaner for eight dollars (money would become meaningless surely). My wife thought that if an asteroid was going to hit the earth that no one would be told about it to prevent the lawlessness that would ensue, though I thought people might notice the big rock in the sky getting bigger every day.

I think I'd probably mainly act like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day if there were only days left and maybe that's why the film writers felt they had to go a different way. But it's a film that I would have liked to see through the eyes of almost any of the other characters than the ones that were chosen to highlight. To be honest I'd have been happy for three hours focusing on the diner where Gillian Jacobs was lezzing up with strangers. But that's just me.

Wouldn't it be cool to have a movie where you could change the focus and follow any character you wished? It'd cost a bit to film but then at least more people would enjoy it. Just a thought.

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