Wasted time

Bad acting in Next mars promising sci-fi source material | Megan Basham

Nicolas Cage can't seem to catch a break these days. After three of his star vehicles from the last two years (Lord of War, The Weather Man, and The Wicker Man) failed to live up to expectations, his latest qualifies as a bona fide bomb. Paramount spent in excess of $70 million on Next (rated PG-13 for violent action, profanity, and sexual situations), but it garnered only $7.1 million on its opening weekend, making it a long-shot to break even at the box office.

It wasn't for lack of solid source material, based as it was on a short story by legendary science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. In other hands, Dick's writing has produced some of the sharpest sci-fi adventures in modern cinema (both Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Steven Spielberg's Minority Report were based on his novels). However, this adaptation feels like a hastily written term paper. The concept behind it is fine, but the execution is terrible.