The synopsis for '40 Days and Nights' says
"When a colossal tectonic shift causes the sea levels to start
rising…". Really? That's what caused the
rainstorm? Because they gave us, the audience,
absolutely no reason why this started happening, leading me to
assume that God was all upset with and stuff, yet again.
One minute these annoying kids are wheeling around in the
Sahara Desert in their jeep, the next thing they're drowning
to death via tidal wave. This is made even more amazing
considering the Sahara is like a billion miles from any nearby
coasts. I mean they annoyed me so I gotta assume they
annoyed God as well which was why I was going with the God
angle. I was wrong. It was colossal tectonic
shift. Duh. Clearly we have a problem and mankind
is in danger.
Fortunately for the planet earth we are in the midst of
constructing a fleet of massive arks. Now we could ask
ourselves, why in the world is the U.S. Government, who had no
idea that the rains were coming, was wasting valuable tax
dollars on a fleet of arks… but we're not going to do
that. We're just thankful that they are building
them. In charge of building these arks is hardcore Lt.
John (Alex Carter) who is one miserable sumbitch, partly
because he has to get the turbine airflow reanimator
capicating accelerator up and running, while the Admiral
is continuously brow beating him, and he's also probably
miserable because his fiancée is a giggly ditz.
Say hello to Dr. Tessa (Monica Keena) who is five feet and a
hundred pounds of rock solid annoyance who puts the Desert
Jeep spinning teenagers to shame. Lt. John needs to get
the Turbine Airflow Reanimator Accelerator working, or we will
all die, and all Tessa wants to do is have a picnic.
It's not like Tessa doesn't have own job to do since she is in
charge of getting DNA samples of every creature on the planet
earth so life can go after the floods subside. I'm not
liking our chances.
The current problems with the Earth are
exacerbated as the storms are getting worse which means the
Turbine really needs to get finished, and Tessa's DNA samples
really need to make it to this unfinished Ark. It looks
like the other Arks are screwed since they are also waiting
for the Turbine Accelerator, but Lt. John is dragging his ass
in getting it finished.
What's also dragging ass right now is this movie, but it is
about to get a little better. You see the DNA samples
are stuck on train tracks which introduces us to train track
DNA sample rescuer and super model Capt. Lynn (Christianna
Carmine) who is absolutely stunning, and who is slated to take
Dr. Tessa on a dangerous mission to rescue the most critical
samples. While both of these lovely women absolutely
SUCK at DNA sample rescuing, this is about the time in the
movie where Dr. Monica and her way too small white t-shirt
gets soaking wet. And while this movie is still probably
dragging ass, Capt. Lynn's perfect facial bone structure and
Dr. Monica's wet t-shirt have officially distracted me.
Ah, but the distractions can only last so long as we have more
adventure to get to. We need honeybees, the floods are
here, the ark is barely ready, the Turbine Accelerator is
lousy and all looks lost. Mankind is doomed. But
maybe not. I mean to me it looks doomed, but right now
I'm looking at the few survivors on the deck of this lousy
arc, after the 40th day when the rains have stopped, looking
at a sunrise with Dr. Monica the ditz proclaiming it 'the most
beautiful thing she has ever seen'. Totally sidestepping
the simple fact that the Earth is flooded and 8 billion people
are dead. I guess she means it's beautiful that she's
not one those dead bastards. Outstanding. And
she's pregnant, meaning that Dr. Monica and Lt. John's baby is
going to be launching point of the new society. We are
doomed.
True enough, director Peter Geiger's film '40 Days and
Nights', from our friends at The Asylum' is not very
good. It moves a little too slow, the narrative defies
all reason and logic on top of being a disjointed mess, the
acting is mostly abhorrent with Monica Keena providing the
majority of this abhorrent acting even though she is fun to
look at, but we gotta admit she and her alleged fiancée
had ZERO chemistry together despite the gifts Monica brought
to the table, and the special effects left much to be
desired. But were we expecting anything more than that
before I dipped my foot in the pond of '40 Days and
Nights'? No we weren't my friends, so that negative
stuff we just mentioned is the baseline, and thus we just
required that this movie elevate itself ever so slightly above
this sorry baseline. Guess what? It did!
Take the special effects. Sure they were suspect, but
this movie was filled with them and that's positive. I
like the scene where Capt. Lynn was piloting the C-130,
because Capt. Lynn was awesome at just about everything,
lamenting that they couldn't land the plane because of no
runway. But just minutes earlier her C-130 took off
without a runway. That beast rose off the ground like a
helicopter. It was awesome, and I didn't know those
planes could do that. Watching actor Alex Carter look
constipated or looking at Christianna Carmine's face or
observing Monica Keena in a wet t-shirt never got old, and we
were really pulling for actor Ty Barnett, as Capt. Amato the
Black Guy, to actually survive this movie. He
didn't. In fact it looked like they ended the brother,
off screen no less, because it's the law. I also enjoyed
the fact that this arc designed to hold fifty thousand people
was piloted by a 3-man crew in office chairs. The office
chairs didn't even match. That was sweet.
Of course some make take my baseline and just proclaim '40
Days and Nights' as a crap movie. I get that. But
not us. The FCU theorem of resultant expectations worked
in our favor with this one, and we can't be mad about that.
