Wrong number. Review on Phone Booth Movie

An entire film based in and around a phone booth, now that sounds like a refreshing and challenging new plot...however one of the main faults of this film is perhaps its over self awareness of this particular fact, causing the plot to carry the burden of a film that does not do it justice.

I do not deny I am not a fan of Joel Schumacher; true, I have not seen too many of his films, but I have seen enough. And from what I have seen, Schumacher has a knack of picking potentially great material and turning it into mediocre entertainment that you can neither hate nor be overwhelmed by. He has this way of making a film that has great elements in it so that an audience can be swayed, but there is always something not quite right, not quite satisfying. His follow-up to Tim Burton's Batman films was colourful, an audience puller with the right amount of catchy one-liners and good performances, but it lacked the darkness of batman's character in the comics from which he evolved that Tim Burton had achieved. His rendering of 8mm from the same screenplay writer who wrote 'se7en' was utterly disappointing..it seems like a recurring pattern for schumacher to be given all the right elements but just not placing them correctly.

Phone booth was not boring, and I watched it with interest wanting to know what would happen next, as is the case with most films. Colin farrell's performance was good, not exceptional but decent and forrest whitaker as usual, by virtue of his expressive face has our trust and belief in his goodness and humanity from the start. The film does have certain visuals that are impressive, but then there will always be interesting visuals when you are shooting crowds of individuals conducting their normal lives. Haven't we all just looked out of our windows and wondered about the lives of each of the people that pass us. yet every great visual of shumacher's seems borrowed, nothing of his own real creation...

..the film sometimes can be off-putting with a gesture too obvious here, or a lack of real depth to a character there, a mere miss of subtlety, a predictable and dissatisfying ending..an anti-climax. Granted, there aren't too many ways to end a premise such as this, but it is the film makers job to then craft the film in such a way that there is always something that strikes a chord. and I know many people will disagree but there was no chord striking with me, primarily due to my unease at knowing there were so many likeable features of the film and I still could not praise it.

I have a vague suspicion that even Schumacher knows that it has the makings of a good film and it is this smugness of his; knowing it will draw audiences that irritates me most; because (and this is just my opinion) he seems to lack the real conviction and passion of a film maker who wants to make it even better, to detail it and layer it and turn it into something exceptional. and I couldn't help but be nagged by this thought throughout the entire film, because when a great film just becomes 'ok' then something has been done wrong.