Double Feature

March 2012 - Now that we're in political primary season, it's nearly impossible to turn on the TV without seeing a presidential candidate or one of his surrogates. That's right. I said surrogates, which happens to be the title of the first of this month's two movies.

If the premise of Surrogates should ever become reality, you and I will lounge in our pajamas all day while our surrogates go out into the world to work and play. Yes. I have seen the future, and it is pajamas.

Anyway, Bruce Willis stars in this PG-13 film from 2009 in which just about everyone has a surrogate. Surrogates are human-like robots that you control with your thoughts from the privacy of your own home. With a surrogate, you can be yourself, only better.

As the movie sets it up, surrogates started as advanced artificial limbs intended to help wounded soldiers. Eventually, the technology progressed to the point where surrogates were whole beings and everybody wanted one. The brains behind the surrogates, Dr. Canter (James Cromwell), started a company and got filthy rich. Then, he decided that maybe surrogates weren't such a good idea.

Overall review: Ehhh, it was OK. The movie has an interesting concept but it never realizes its full potential. A murder plot gets mixed up with the philosophy of what it means to be human, and the result is something of a mess.

Our second film, the R-rated Code 46 from 2003, is set in the (not-too-distant) future, where people need "cover" to enjoy life's amenities, such as shelter and travel. Those without cover are exiled outside society.

The movie opens with some on-screen titles that set up the premise. "Code 46" is a reference to a person's genetic make-up - 23 chromosomes from mom, 23 from dad. In the society of the movie, cloning is prevalent, so special care is taken to make sure that people don't hook up with any of their genetic cousins.

In the movie, Tim Robbins plays a guy who's investigating a sort of counterfeiting operation at a business in Shanghai. He figures out that Samantha Morton is the crook, but he falls in love with her, so he fingers another worker as the criminal.

Tim is married, but that doesn't stop him from sharing a night of passion with Samantha. Then, he goes home to Seattle. He's later sent back to Shanghai, where he again falls under Samantha's spell. Despite the fact that Tim now knows that Samantha is a genetic "cousin," they run off in an attempt to be together.

Overall review: Ehhh, it was OK. The movie sets up an interesting depiction of the future, and I watched it all the way through. But, I was a little put off by the element of incest. Once Tim continued to pursue Samantha even though he knew they were related, the film took on an "ewww" factor that I couldn’t overcome.