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Movie Review - The Cave (2005)
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(What this rating means)
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| Director: |
Bruce Hunt |
| Starring: |
Cole Hauser, Morris Chestnut, Lena Headey, and Piper Perabo |
| Rated: |
PG-13 (for intense creature violence) |
| Length: |
97 minutes |
| Genre: |
Horror/Thriller |
| Tagline: |
There are places man was never meant to go. |
| Studio: |
Sony Pictures |
| Website: |
The Cave |
| Release: |
August 26, 2005 |
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PLOT
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Romania - 30 years ago: explorers are checking out an abandoned church when all of a sudden the floor collapses.
They now seem to be in an old cave, and just when we start to hear weird noises we flash forward to the present
day. A group of cave divers are prepared to enter the cave site and find out what exactly lies below the surface.
Unfortunately for them there are some very strange cave creatures roaming around. The divers become trapped and
must try to find a way out. Hauser ensues.
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JOHNNY'S TAKE
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Ladies and gentleman, I present to you "The B-Grade Monster Movie World According to The Cave." For starters,
it's absolutely essential that you start out with a routine familiarity in which the story is executed. Lucky for
y'all, and unbeknownst to the movie's producers, I snuck into a production meeting and here's how it went
down:
"All right, we need lots of scenes with the actors carrying flashlights in the darkness."
"Got it. And we'll make sure they all walk around really slowly so that the audience is just waiting for something
to jump out."
"Perfect. And give me cramped spaces. Every monster movie has to have cramped spaces."
"No problem. That'll come naturally within the cave setting. Oh, and we're prepared to go forward with your
request to have weird things swimming around the legs of the actors when they're in the cave water."
"Works for me. Just make sure to play plenty of tense music while this is happening, and remind all the pretty
boy actors to squint and furrow their brows to show how desperate the situation is."
Been there, done that, right? Right. So you need to go ahead and accept the fact that this is a movie that's
not dipping too deep in the ol' originality well. To be honest, I don't know why any of us would really expect
*much* from this one to begin with. Come on, the movie is called The Cave. If this title was any more
generic it'd be a Hilary Duff coming-of-age movie. I think I'll write a script for a racing movie and call it
The Car. And the cast... ah, you just have to love the ethnically diverse conventions of the B-grade
monster movie cast. Good news! Before security found me, I managed to hear the production meeting's discussion
on the casting. Allow me to share:
"Have we found a big, tough black dude yet?"
"Yep, we got Morris Chestnut."
"Morris Chestnut? I'm pretty sure that's the color of the paint in my den."
"No, we originally thought it was a brand of chewing tobacco, but he was in Anacondas:
The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, so this is a step up for him."
"All right, and what about an Asian character?"
"We got Daniel Dae Kim from Lost to be the photographer. He was going to be a scientist or mathematician,
but we wanted to go against stereotype."
"Hot chicks?"
"Got 'em. We'll put Piper Perabo in tight, midriff-revealing clothing; and Lena Headey is going to be our really
hot scientist."
"Hmm, do you think we can get away with having a really hot girl as the scientist? Seems a little cliché."
"Oh, don't worry about that. She's British, and everybody knows the British accent makes you sound smarter and
scientist-like."
"What about the hunky guys?"
"You'll be proud - we picked up three generic pretty boys with different combinations of dimples and 3-day beard
growth."
"Good, good. But what about the lead character? We were wanting a physically fit guy with dimples and a slightly
scruffy look who can talk with a Southern accent. Did we get McConaughey?"
"No, not exactly."
"Oh, OK, then Josh Lucas?"
"Um, try Cole Hauser."
And there's your cast. Not that Cole Hauser is bad. I mean, he's definitely at his Cole Hauserest here,
meaning that he talks tough, gives us a lot of intense stares, and serves up a big ol' slice of cheese to
melt on our crackers. The problem with the characters is that I never really cared about them or their
predicament. Nobody was cool enough (meaning nobody was "Josh Brolin cool") to make me want to root for them
to kick some cave monster rump. I was mainly interested in looking at the cool cave scenery and staring
at Perabo and Headey.
I am kind of surprised that the characters didn't start assaulting our senses with a series of bad one-liners.
When Dimple Boy #1 started making eyes at Lena Headey I cringed and waited for him to say something stupid like,
"I see something I'd like to spelunk!" but thankfully we were spared.
But don't you worry, the movie makes up for the lack of bad one-liners with plenty of Velveeta spread in other
areas. At the point where the remaining characters ride a waterslide and survive plummeting from a waterfall you
might as well go ahead and prepare for "make your own joke" time because things REALLY start to get goofy. The
worst is when a climber develops superhero powers and flies through the air, landing perfectly onto a cave wall.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiight. I was so affected by this that I laughed out loud and audibly said, "Oh come on!" But by the
time Hauser is clashing with a monster in midair your sides will be hurting from laughing so hard that you won't
really care. Unless you aren't amused by unintentional humor. In that case you'll probably been a little upset
that you spent money on this one.
Despite all that, I have to admit that I was never bored, and the movie kept me fairly entertained - the main reason
being that I loved the atmosphere. I've always been fascinated by caves. Who knows what could be hiding in the
depths? I've always thought the dark, mysterious cave atmosphere is perfectly ripe for a movie, so the set design
pulled me in from the start, and the underwater photography is excellent.
Plus, the movie itself starts off effectively enough by keeping everything as mysterious as possible, only showing us
brief glimpses of what's hiding underwater and in the dark recesses of the cave.
Unfortunately, The Cave suffers from too many clichés, too many implausibilities, and too little reasons
to care about the characters and their situation. The result is a somewhat entertaining flick with a really cool
atmosphere that feels like it wants to be Pitch Black more so than desiring to set itself apart from the
pack.
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ODDS & ENDS
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- Cole Hauser is the son of veteran actor Wings Hauser who was in an episode of The Young Riders with
Josh Brolin.
- Johnny likes to refer to Cole Hauser as "Matthew McConaughey #3." Of course, "Matthew McConaughey #2" is
Josh Lucas.
- Daniel Dae Kim from Lost has a small role. Hey, he speaks English perfectly fine in the movie!
What's going on here? Exactly what kind of stunt is Lost trying to pull??? I demand answers!
- The Cave was filmed mainly in Romania - a country with over 12,000 registered caves. Up to 30 films a
year used to be filmed in Romania, but now that numbered has been trimmed to one per year.
- Johnny Betts has never been to Romania.
- Filming also took place in the Yucatan caves in Mexico.
- The Cave claims to have some basis in truth because new micro-ecologies have been discovered in deep
caves, especially in Romania.
- According to film consultant Dr. Christi Lascu (acclaimed speleologist and Romanian editor of National
Geographic magazine), 35 brand new species were found in the Movila Caves in the late 80s. Among the species
found was a 10 cm centipede with a poisonous bite. There was nothing the size of the creature in The Cave,
but in theory there is not a limit for the size of animals living down there.
- Andrew Mason, one of the film's producers, says they hired some of the world's greatest cave divers as
consultants in order to keep the movie as technically plausible as possible.
- Apparently those cave divers failed to see the implausibility of flying through the air and perfectly landing
on a cave wall.
- One out of every 14 cave divers dies each year.
- To prepare for his role, Hauser watched a documentary called Amazing Caves. He was so blown away that
he felt compelled to refer to cave divers as "earth's astronauts."
- The actors sometimes had to spend up to 10 - 12 hours a day in a wetsuit, constantly in and out of the
water.
- A 750,000 gallon tank was created to shoot underwater photography.
- Cole Hauser was in 2 Fast 2 Furious with Paul Walker who is in Into the Blue with Josh Brolin who
was in Hollow Man with Kevin Bacon.
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MAMA'S APPROVAL
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Mama could handle the edited-for-TV version of this, but the theatrical cut may be just a little too rough
around the edges for her taste. There's some profanity (including "s" words and a handful of G-d**n's),
and there's enough violence to make this one a bit too much for the younger kids to handle.
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TRAILER COMPARISON
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The trailer made me hope that the movie would be creepier than it actually is, so you might want to go ahead
and lower those expectations.
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THE GIST
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The Cave is a fairly routine monster movie that at least has a really cool atmosphere going for it. The
cheese factor near the end will probably take you right out of the atmosphere though and have you
laughing at the goofiness of it all. If you want to see this at the theater then make it a matinee. Otherwise,
it can certainly wait for a rental.
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