THE GIFT

The winning team that brought us the riveting small-town mystery A Simple Plan a couple years back collaborate again for The Gift, bringing a gaggle of talented actors along for the ride. But despite the talents of director Sam Raimi, writers Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson, and actors the likes of Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi, and, well, some of the rest of them, The Gift never rises above typical thriller/mystery fare.

Cate Blanchett, the new generation's chameleon of accents, plays Annie, a humble woman who reads future in the cards for her desperate neighbors in a small Southern town. Oh... the South, you ask? Yes, people are much freakier there, at least in the movies, so you have a wife abuser (Keanu Reeves, with his awful patchy beard), his distraught spouse (Hilary Swank, with an impressive mullet), the kindly principal (Greg Kinnear), his tarty Southern Belle fiancée (Katie Holmes), and a twitchy loose cannon (Giovanni Ribisi). One of these characters ends up dead, and poor Annie, who just wants to stay out of trouble and care for her fatherless young sons, is called upon to use her psychic "gift" to help find not only the body, but the murderer.

The South always has a nice ambience for drama, with its foggy swamps, heavy murky air, and shifty characters in rickety pickup trucks. And Cate Blanchett is a fabulous actress who is almost always the best thing about any movie she's in. But unfortunately, The Gift is weighed down by a cop-out story that falls back on thriller clichés, planting pretty much every character as a suspect, and throwing a supposed zinger surprise at the end when the culprit is revealed. But by then I had lost interest and become restless for the movie to just wrap up.

For those of you Dawson's Creek fans, however, you may find the rental worth it for a full-on topless-Katie Holmes-having-tantrum scene. "She done all growed up!" (That's for sure!)

  DVD NOTES   
  
Not much extra on this one except a short behind-the-scenes "making of" documentary, that includes interviews with all the stars and the director gushing about each other as usual. Most notable is how startlingly different Cate Blanchett looks, with closely cropped hair, makeup on, and donning her own natural Aussie accent... totally glam! Also, this is the first time I've actually seen what director Sam Raimi looks like, and I was alarmed how much he looks like Joxer from Xena: Warrior Princess. This should not have been too surprising though, as Joxer was played by Sam's brother Ted Raimi, and Sam himself produced the TV show. But for a moment there, my impression of fantasy vs. reality was thrown for a loop!