“Stay” (20th Century Fox)
Poor Ewan McGregor! This has just not been his year. He has had one flop after another and now he comes along with “Stay,” a movie that should prove to be the biggest flop of all. It isn’t that he is bad in the movie, it is just that it is a bad movie. Being good in a bad movie rarely counts for anything.
McGregor plays Sam Foster, a psychiatrist who is taking care of patients for Beth Levy (Janeane Garofalo), a fellow psychiatrist. One of those he picks up is Henry Latham (Ryan Gosling), a disturbed young man who has trouble discerning the difference between reality and fantasy.
Henry relates to Sam that he is going to kill himself on a certain date at a certain time. Now Sam has to find a way to stop him, but as the days go by Sam too begins to unravel. His world is turned upside down when he starts seeing and talking with dead people.
None of the movie makes any sense whatsoever. McGregor and Gosling seem to know what they are doing but the audience surely doesn’t. Naomi Watts is seen as Sam’s girlfriend and Bob Hoskins is a man who is either a friend of Sam’s or Henry’s father. Who knows Who cares
Marc Forster directed this mess and he is the same director who gave us “Monsters Ball” and “Finding Neverland.” What happened here It is difficult to imagine his talent being presented in this way. Surely it got ruined in the editing room or something along that line. Or maybe the projectionist at the theater where I watched it got the reels in backwards.
In truth it is just a lousy movie and every one connected with it must share the blame. Gosling will go on to better roles; Watts has “King Kong” coming up; but poor McGregor may never recover from this string of losers with “Stay” being the biggest of all.
The movie is rated R for profanity and violence.
If you go to see this film you are going to want to do anything but “stay” till it ends. The acting will hold you for a while but then it all falls apart and you just want to escape.
I scored “Stay” a go 3 out of 10.
