Review by Donner

New Line Cinema Presents
Birth

Be careful what you wish for.

Reviewed 11.24.04

Directed by Jonathan Glazer

Written by Milo Addica, Jean-Claude Carrière, and Jonathan Glazer

Starring Nicole Kidman, Cameron Bright, Danny Huston, Lauren Bacall, and Alison Elliot

Rated R for sexuality

FUN FACT: The controversial nude scene in the bathtub was done using blue screens and trick photography, Cameron Bright and Nicole Kidman where never actually in the tub together.

Not very often, a movie come along and really makes my skin crawl.  This movie, Birth, is one of them.  I'm not kidding, folks, me actually sitting all the way through this horrible movie should be considered an Olympian feat which I should be getting some kind of award for.

This lump of crap is about a widow, played by Nichole Kidman, who is about to be married.  She's happy and so, of course, something has to come along and ruin it.  That thing is, oddly enough, a ten year old boy claiming to be her first husband reincarnated and, what's more, he wants to get back into a relationship together.

Paging Mary Kay Letourneau!  Your life story is on line one!

Granted, this could have been an interesting premise if Birth was supposed to be a comedy, but it's not... even the really horrible idea driving it doesn't bring any unintentional laughs.  However, Birth just may give you a serious case of the willies as it dances close to the border of acceptable and leaps right into the land of Just Plain Wrong.

Seriously, though, I've just got to say one thing... even if you believe that the kid is really Kidman's husband reincarnated, how freakin' creepy would her husband have been beforehand?  I mean, seriously... if this kid was really supposed to represent her husband before death, he must have been a winner in the personality department.

Come to think of it, Birth is an appropriate title because, after sitting through this thinly veiled propaganda piece for pedophilia, you will discover that the whole thing is just one big cinematic miscarriage.

To quote Roger Ebert, I hated this movie.  Hated, hated, hated, hated it.  I am literally speechless as to how... wrong this movie was!  This movie is just creepy... creepy like watching a brother and sister open-mouth kiss or hearing about your grandmother's sexual conquests.

Aside from the movie's plot which basically sets up an icky romance between a 10-year-old boy and a 37-year-old woman, Birth is a plodding monster of a movie, boring in execution when it's not being disturbing, and slow-paced like it really has no clue where to go next.  This movie is an example of what a Kubrick movie would be like if Kubrick had a bad story... beautiful cinematography, but crappy plot.

Even if, by some longshot chance, you do end up getting into the mystery of Birth, by the end you're going to feel like you've been jerked around for two hours.

The movie looks beautiful and the actors, God bless them, try their best... but this movie is just a looser in all respects.  If you wanted the title to describe this movie in better detail, Afterbirth would have been more appropriate.

Skip it.