Zero stars (out of four)
Chad Michael Murray, a rich Southern guy, a smart Asian guy, a busty blonde, a distrusted Middle Eastern man, a yelling black woman, an angry little person and a confused old lady are on a plane.
That collection of stereotypes (and Chad Michael Murray) is not the set-up for a bad joke. It' s the group of people contained in the first class cabin in "Left Behind," a movie so astonishingly, hilariously incompetent that nothing I say can prepare you for it. This movie is the worst. And the best. I haven't laughed like that in a theater in a long, long time, and not one of those laughs was earned on purpose.
Making his "Wicker Man" look like "Adaptation," Nicolas Cage stars as the amazingly named Rayford Steele, a pilot planning to cheat on his wife (Lea Thompson) because she's become too religious. "If she's gonna run off with another man, why not Jesus?" he feebly says to his daughter Chloe (Cassi Thomson), who flew in for dad's birthday and isn't happy that he's captaining a flight from New York to London with a very conspicuously flirty flight attendant (Nicky Whelan). Lucky for Chloe, dad's only planning to cheat (he hasn't slept with the flight attendant yet), and his plans evaporate when-35 minutes into the movie, after many long, seated conversations at the airport-several people disappear from the plane. It happens in other locations around the world too, mostly kids and devout believers. What's going on?????
Obviously it's the rapture, but the endlessly awkward "Left Behind," based on the bestselling novel that also was a bad 2000 Kirk Cameron movie (but not nearly this bad), treats this assessment as a revelation. The movie exists to wag a finger at non-believers while opening up an endless list of questions. Are great humans who don't read the Bible not spared, but murderers who do read it are? Are there really no minors who don't deserve to be brought to heaven? And why doesn't that dog get to go?
Of course, this is a movie where adult flight attendants gossip like 12-year-olds and strangers talk to each other like no strangers ever would. Investigative journalist Buck Williams (Murray) gets treated like George Clooney even though we have no reason to find him credible. (He also randomly starts acting like he and Chloe, who met minutes ago, have known each other for years. It's creepy.) Murray's awful-my favorite is the blank way he says, "We're on fire"-but so is everyone else. Cage is his usual drowsy self, even when declaring a state of emergency.
I love the way Cage throws out items as he rifles through the bag of a flight attendant who disappeared (she went to Bible study and wasn't a hussy). I love the one and only family photo into which it looks like Cage was Photoshopped. I love that all Buck eventually is good for is pressing "redial," and the suggestion that a plane can't land unless a port-a-potty is out of the way. I love that there's no societal context to address why the rapture's happening now and that Chloe, no joke, does something that reminded me of both "Wet Hot American Summer" and "The Great Muppet Caper."
Really, I cannot believe this movie exists, but I'm so glad it does.
Watch Matt review the week's big new movies Fridays at 11:30 a.m. on NBC.
mpais@tribune.com
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