Seven Pounds

Will Smith's Seven Pounds is taking a pounding from a good number of critics, who have been asked by the producers not to reveal any "spoilers." Consider A.O. Scott's comments in the New York Times: "I don't see how any review could really spoil what may be among the most transcendently, eye-poppingly, call-your-friend-ranting-in-the-middle-of-the-night-just-to-go-over-it-one-more-time crazily awful motion pictures ever made. I would tell you to go out and see it for yourself, but you might take that as a recommendation rather than a plea for corroboration. Did I really see what I thought I saw?" Lou Lumenick in the New York Post describes it as "a Will Smith weepie that should include diabetes testing in the admission price, as a 'gripping mystery.'" He goes on: "The only mystery here is how many people are actually going to pay good money to watch this preposterous romantic melodrama, which uses a fractured narrative to cloud an absurd plot that would probably be laughed off the screen if it were presented in a straightforward manner." Tom Maurstad in the Dallas Morning News figures that the spoiler warning from producers represents a way to ward off any serious critique of the movie. "Seven Pounds is a bad, ridiculous movie, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be free to discover that yourself, unencumbered by a review's revelations," he concedes. "Still, it's almost ingenious how director Gabrielle Muccino and writer Grant Nieporte have concocted a movie that inoculates itself from advance criticism. A nonspoiler synopsis of the movie would be something like: Will Smith plays a guy who's alternately a vengeful bully and a wish-granting saint for reasons that aren't explained until just before the movie ends. It's as if Mr. Smith took this role to test the limits of his box-office-king likability." Writing in the Chicago Tribune, critic Michael Phillips says that the movie "has a heart as big as all outdoors. Unfortunately it's made out of high-fructose bull." Like many critics, Phillips absolves Smith of blame for the film's deficiencies. "He's not the problem, although if a major player green-lights a more grandiose and specious screenplay about redemption any time this century, it'll be a miracle."