Maybe it's because Rear Window is one of my favourite films, or maybe it's because Shit LaBoff is in this, but I hated this one...

rear window is definitely the superior film...

i can see how he gets on people's nerves, but i have to say I think it worked in this movie... it's fun to see him get screwed with

SPOILERS AHEAD - If you haven't seen this movie, but plan to, you've been warned, this post contains spoilers. Reading on is your choice, and I'm not responsible if it spoils your viewing experience. If you want to watch it first, then return to this, I'd love your thoughts at that appropriate time.

Okay, I watched it...but now I have to rewatch Rear Window which, I remember I enjoyed...I just don't fully remember the movie itself (for me, Hitchcock is more about his visual camera eye than the stories - I couldn't take my eyes off Vertigo, it was visually hypnotizing, but don't ask me to tell you what it was about; and I can only imagine how North by Northwest must have thrilled audiences when it originally hit theatres, but that movie, to me, is a mess...I may have to watch that one again for it to better make any sense to me...but I digress).

As for Disturbia, while there are some redeeming qualities, there aren't enough for this to work, for me.

First of all, it's nice to see Carrie-Anne Moss working, and she was somewhat believable as the widow, but she was woefully underutilized, which I'll revisit after my next point. Nice also to see Viola Davis, although the character she played here made me half expect her to utter her "we're going to relocate you to a secure facility where you'll be safe" (fans of Knight and Day know what I'm talking about).

I got the distinct impression this movie was trying hard to extend/apply the youth-centredness that we fondly remember from the beloved comics Peanuts, wherein adults don't even have intelligible voices, just noise, as kids' ears often quasi-hear them; and Calvin & Hobbes, wherein Calvin's parents managed to remain nameless except for "Mom" and "Dad" as seen through the eyes of Calvin.

While we see the "girl next door" (literally), and feel the adolescent angst between her parents and her, we never even meet her parents (except for their interruptions into her "life" at Kale's place), nor gain any insight into the source of the angst...largely because it's made irrelevant, it just is, because adolescence is angst. She comes over and forgets, as best she can, all about what she's trying to escape (whether sitting on her roof, or just hanging out with Kale at his house). Thus we are forced to also forget them, because they are essentially invisible.

Back to Moss, we never see her grieve or express grief at losing her husband so tragically. We are allowed to wallow, with the kid, in his turmoil, never confront it, never talk about it, and certainly never require that he feel for his mother who lost her husband; nah, it's all about me me me. As an adult whose two kids are both older than these teenagers, I find myself trying to connect more with the mother, and there isn't enough of her with which to connect, all there is are these spoiled rich kids.

The girl next door rolls around in her parents' BMW; Kale roams around his bedroom that's bigger than a lot of people's apartments, full from floor to ceiling with imagery that shouts "this is my room, I've got lots of toys and techno-gadgets my parents bought and I'm free to pretty much do whatever I want." These rich kids are hard to relate to, hard to sympathize with. In my world, kids sure as hell don't talk to their parents the way Kale did to his mother. Clearly, the audience for this movie is not adults, especially not with grown children; it's for teenagers.

I'll be honest - I'm not the biggest Shia LaBeouf fan, but that actually makes it a pleasure for me to say I didn't mind him in this film. He played to his type, but less so, sufficiently less so that he wasn't utterly annoying as he was in...other outings where 80% of his dialog is crescendo-ing "no no no No No NO NO NO NO NO" from scene to gouge-my-ears-with-an-icepick scene.

But, if there was any doubt as to the target audience of this PG-3 rated film, it'd have to be that entire, positively imbecilic, flaming dog feces scene:

1. it was a small bag, it didn't need to be stomped out, it would have burned out harmlessly on its own
2. one would no doubt have been able to smell it before attempting to stomp it out
3. who stomps out a fire - any fire - wearing only socks?
4. how many stomps should it have taken to realize it was a bag of dogshit?
5. who would then run down the street with dogshit smeared into their socks, instead of taking them off?

That brings me to the cop. "The teacher you punched out is my brother." Boo-frickety-hoo. Why TF would a teacher be so cruel to a kid by mentioning his father's name like that? The kid was obviously still traumatized, the teacher deserved to get knocked the F out. That entire angle didn't add one iota of value to the movie, except maybe to feel little sympathy when he got his neck wrung, but why would that even be necessary? Were we going to root for the villain? Ah, which brings me to...

Lastly, our villain. I'm a David Morse fan, and he can deftly handle good guy roles and bad guy roles with equal aplomb. He was quietly menacing enough, but the writing was just low grade:

1. I always wonder why Hollywood insists on presenting us with a villain who is so painstaking, so calculating, so ahead of everyone else, up to the point when challenged by a bumbling hero-type, and then they get hasty, sloppy, messy, reckless. Wailing out with the baseball bat and killing the cop was a far cry from that cool, collected customer who fixed his bumper, welcomed the cops into his home in a manner that would've made Poe tear up The Tell-Tale Heart - did he really expect to survive that mess, in his house, by telling police that the kid twisted that cop's neck around? Really?
2. All that nasty decomposing soup water under the house would be a mold and stink nightmare. There's no way in hell people could visit that house and not smell something afoul. No way in hell.
3. we never get any insight into the who/why of it all. All the adult characters, including the bad guy, are utterly uni-dimensional, nothing more than pylons through which our teenagers navigate the pain and suffering of being poor little rich kids in the suburbs.

All in all, this coulda woulda shoulda been a better commentary on issues in suburbia - teenage abandonment, inept policing, boomer parents neglecting their kids in the never-ending pursuit of material gain...but it had little to hang a serious hat on. But, hey, teenagers need movies to watch, too.

But this is just my first take after one viewing. For those who thought this was a good homage to Rear Window, please do share - what made it a good homage to you?