Push

Summitt Entertainment | Starring Djimon Hounsou, Dakota Fanning, Chris Evans, Camilla Belle | Rated PG-13

I don’t have long before they come, so you’re going to have to listen carefully and pay close attention. The powerful underground group behind the supernatural action movie Push are hot on my trail and using their powers to coerce me into thinking it’s a great movie. But I have to get the word out. A great movie it’s not.

In the film, humans with supernatural abilities are racing to gain control of a super-powered steroid formula that can make them even more powerful.

At the center of the mess is Nick Gant (played by Fantastic Four‘s Chris Evans, aka The Human Torch) and Dakota Fanning, trying to survive the attacks of the other super-powered beings who fall into categories like movers, pushers, watchers, bleeders and cloggers (and I only made that last one up).

So far, so good, right? Those of us who love superhero movies may be suckered by what seems like a winning formula, but there are so many misfires with this film that you wonder if Mr. Magoo is holding the gun (actually, no one is—guns flying through the air powered by telekinesis is one of the film’s proudest and overused effects). Push also can’t decide if it wants to be a full-blown action movie or some somber artsy treatise on finding your way in a cruel world. How else can you explain the 13-year-old Fanning, who’s in the awkward in-between cute stages, hamming it up by stumbling around drunk?

Even more so, you don’t really care about these characters or have any idea what their motivations might be, other than to save their own skins. I keep hoping that somewhere with the new breed of heroes some of them might actually start doing some things that are—oh I don’t know—heroic. Most of the time, the heroes are just cleaning up messes they helped to create. Maybe Batman should open a school.

The film will most remind viewers of Jumper, which was fairly forgettable but at least an enjoyable ride through the world. The fact that you’ll probably be longing for that film should tell you something about this one.

I better wrap this up—someone’s at the door … .

DeWayne Hamby is a New Man reviewer and the associate editor of Christian Retailing magazine. Check out his blog at dewaynehamby.blogspot.com.