If your idea of fun is watching Gwynnth Paltrow portray a cadaver that has her skull cut open, boy have I got a movie for you. If not, maybe you pass on Steve Soderburgh's plodding epidemic procedural "Contagion".
A bat gets mixed up in a pig and a contagious virus knocks off 26 million people while Matt Damon doesn't get it infected and spends the rest of the movie cock blocking his daughter's boyfriend, Lawrence Fishburn tries to contain the virus and Jude Law plays one of those low life bloggers and tries to make a buck off it. With the end never in doubt, we sit around watching the human race devolve to animals, more or less, before evolving back. Nothing too thrilling, and the Government, nothing too thrilling either, saves the world.
Damon has the father thing down to a fine art. He is quickly becoming his generations Tom Hanks (Hanks is growing too old to be Hanks), and he brings an enormous calm to his role. A fine idea in moderation and since this movie is all about moderation, it is just another bland on bland.
I saw a movie years ago, on PBS, about the start of the AIDS virus, that had a vastly clearer handle on the price of death, of deadly attacks on our immune system, than this one does. The truth is, AIDS is a little too nearby for this one long shrug to mean much of anything. For sure it isn't entertaining. It is too close to the bone to be entertaining.
U2's "All I Want You" plays at a prom for two. I didn't like the song then, and I don't like it here. "Amante Del Vino" by Michael J. Thomas makes Kenny G. look exciting.
Movie: B
Music: C