Cellular

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Summary:
A schoolteacher is kidnapped, and she hacks into a random number with a busted phone while held captive, reaching the cell phone of a random guy that somehow manages to believe her plight (just go with it), and goes on a desperate mission to help her as her son and husband are in danger.

Review:
This is definetely one of those "guilty pleasure" movies. The concept is very preposterous, and your suspension of disbelief has to be wayyyy out there, but if you just go with the flow, you might find yourself enjoying this movie more than you care to admit!

Ellis brought me a good time with Final Destination 2, which did a great job at never trying too hard to be more than what it is; brainless entertainment. He hits the mark again with Cellular, which I don't remember why I even chose to see it in theaters, but am overall pretty happy I did. I can't stress enough how it's nothing more than a B movie action fluff time waster, with some weak dialogue (a lot of Basinger's desperate plees came off as whispery and falsely desperate - was it her, the dialogue, or both? I'd wager BOTH) and one crazy anecdote after another. Chris Evans is our hero of the story, going out of his way to help a stranger and somehow believing her story even though it seems like a bad episode of Punk'd, or maybe a seriously unfunny prank. Eventually it turns out to be the truth, but I don't remember how exactly he comes to believe her.
If memory serves me right, he is convinced in a conversation kinda like this:

Vanessa: Help me, whoever you are, I'm being kidnapped. This phone is broken and there's a chance that I won't be able to contact anyone else. PLEASE help me.
Ryan: What? This isn't funny, is this a prank?
Vanessa: (whispery desperation) No, this isn't a prank, please, you HAVE to help me. My name is Vanessa. I need your help, please!
Ryan: Oh, shit!! This is real! What can I do?!

Once Ryan begins to break the rules of the law to help find Jessica's son and husband, we're stuck with a quickly paced race for time, and I can't help but find myself falling into this outlandish movie with more than just a little bit of my tongue in the cheek. I got a kick out of his screaming at other drivers to get off their cell phones, only to finish yelling and place that phone right back on his ear, or the cheap and simple digs at asshole drivers in general; loud music, idiotic red-light flirts... that shit's pretty FUNNY! I also give props where props are due in Chris Evans, who helped carry each scene with the right amount of drama and comedy. It's a light movie, and Evans brought the right flavor to it all.
As for the storyline itself, it's pretty simple, and there's the slow process of revealing more about the reasons for Vanessa's capture as the runtime reaches its' zenith until the "big surprise" at the end. If you've watched movies before, I'm sure the big surprise won't catch you off guard, but once again, what does it matter? It's just a plain fun, stupid movie that doesn't get boring, and brings me some good laughs along the way. The stupid-ass lawyer dude from Hostel is in this movie, and he's annoying as fuck, but at least it was the first time I recalled seeing him in a movie, and his relevance to the movie works better than it did in Hostel, where I just hated him for every single second onscreen and wish he was excised from the movie altogether. In this case, he's dumb, but his final scene at the impound was pretty funny. I had to laugh at that.

David Ellis has been in movies for quite some time as a stuntman, and he's done a lot of second unit work over the years. It seems like his experience in the stunt world has helped with his directorial skills in providing a rapid pace and the right amount of corn with the given screenplay in Final Destination 2 and Cellular. It's great when a not very good movie does everything it can to show that it isn't doing anything more than attempt to entertain you, with complete knowlege of the fact it's dumb, while at the same time doesn't go overboard with its' own idiocracy. Tough act to juggle! Get some friends together, rent a few bad movies along with Cellular and make it a worthy "B Movie Night Party".

GRADE: B-

Reviewed 8/24/06