Godsend

Godsend, a horror flick that already has attracted controversy because of its plot -- about scientists who clone a dead child -- is also attracting some pretty horrendous reviews, especially surprising since its stars include Robert De Niro, Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romjin-Stamos. In his review in the Washington Post, Desson Thomson says that he'd like to get De Niro on the phone to ask him, Bobby, very seriously, is there anything you say no to anymore? (Peter Howell in the Toronto Star figures that De Niro has been replaced by an inferior clone.) Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe describes the movie as vile. Gene Seymour in Newsday is kinder, calling it this soupy, tedious mess. It's a thriller, a bad thriller, completely lacking in psychological or emotional truth, writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. Lou Lumenick in the New York Post begins his review by writing, There's no excuse for a thriller as lame, leaden and unthrilling as Godsend, which manages to take a potentially interesting subject -- human cloning -- and use it to put audiences to sleep.