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While on vacation in Las Vegas, I read Dean Koontz’s “Odd Thomas” novel and found it very enjoyable. I believed that someday it would make a great movie, or even a franchise as it did in book form. But Stephen Sommers proved me wrong.
“Odd Thomas” is about a seemingly average fry cook from Pico Mundo, California, who does something Kooks may refer as “seeing dead people.” Although he claims he aids people find justice. For instance, in the opening scene, Odd confronts the murderer of a young girl who was seeking his aid. In this case, well after hearing that claim, no reasonable person would think “Odd Thomas” has any chance of surviving. One scene afraid of what followed: Odd the hunter, props the feared milksop baddie swim the neighbourhoods he was chasing through to a pool party. It is here, during this scene that Sommers’ need for action overpowers everything Set on the “Mummy” and “Van Helsing” and this scene and load him with headache inducing narm. Quick zooms, slow motion fighting, loud electronic music, freeze frames, every overused piece of trick in the book and with everything comes smashed my head and had. Instantly one knows that they are dealing with a flawed project where all of its narrative and character foibles are ineptly covered by smoke and mirrors. Badly shoddily and haphazardly crafted like a clone “Scream” program which was never intended for cinemas.
To put it lightly, Odd is dating Stormy Llewellyn (Addison Timlin) – yes, seriously, and Sommers’ adaption of Koontz’s book is driven by the woefully contorted supernatural plot that we do not learn anything about, nor do we give a damn about the Odd-Stormy connection which form the basis of the source material. Odd and Stormy are meant to be together forever – surely a tough ask for a casting agent but one that’s completely bobbled here, as Yelchin and Timlin have absolutely no chemistry. Odd and Stormy is some thing that must have bette chemistry, and while Timlin does have an interesting screen presence and stole the otherwise mediocre Best Man Down last year, she is wooden and ineffective here. Fans of the book knows that an “Odd Thomas” with out an interesting Stormy is definitely fighthing a losing battle. Willem Dafoe looks bored as the cop who knows Odd’s secret and Patton Oswalt appears in a cameo like a Russia from the book, tries to tell us what was an interesting character of the book, who has been turned into a plot device.
From the start, Odd witnesses the slaughter of screaming faceless people in bowling shirts who plead for him to save them. Now, imagine scripting something like that. It reads well, but picturing it is tough for which Sommers was never prepared. The outcome is, instead of dread-inducing, clunky. And Yelchin fails to properly market the tension in visions and the later emergence of “Bodachs” which Thomas sees when doom is about to strike. Yelchin is one of those actors left in the lurch by a scripter/director who does not comprehend composition or obtrusive character development.
Odd understands that something awful is about to happen and we know he is going to stop it before it occurs. Otherwise, there’s no movie and so because of this, “Odd Thomas” now becomes a film that lacks the depth of character, style, or even atmosphere to make it engaging. Sommers and his team tried to use the book’s narrative from Koontz, but do not understand that the reason why the novel was appealing was because of the character Odd Thomas, the medium fry cook who is a wise-cracking fry cook. By surrounding Odd with cheap special effects, wooden supporting performances, and overused camera gimmicks, they have condemned this character to death. The fate is a pretty horrible movie.
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