An easygoing, slightly quirky drama with a sci-fi element and a story that kind of creeps up on you in a nice way. Travolta plays a fortyish everyman of no consequence living in a small town in Northern California. During a birthday party for him at the local bar, he steps out for a moment, sees some kind of flash in the night sky and konks out. Soon after his revival, he realizes that his intelligence has been significantly increased. He has all these new ideas and can figure out things which before were impossible to figure out. He ceases to need sleep, reads a couple of books a night, and thinks up inventions. Townspeople are at first amused by this new genius in their midst, but soon begin to fear him, especially when he begins to exhibit telekinetic abilities. Forest Whitaker plays his best friend, Robert Duvall is a doctor friend and Kyra Sedgwick is a new resident and possible love interest.
Eventually, after Travolta cracks some secret government code as a lark, the government intrudes and the new genius begins to look at his new gifts as a curse. In the final act, we learn what really happened to this everyman to turn him into a superman, which seems to veer the story back to everyday reality, but it doesn't really address all those telekinetic powers. For most of the picture, my impression was that alien forces had targeted the central character, as some experiment; that's what the viewer is supposed to think, probably. The film has some lackluster aspects: Travolta's attempts to romance Sedgwick are pathetic and she never reciprocates - not to the very end; there was something lacking there in chemistry or story, so her attitude towards him at the finale doesn't jibe with the rest of the film. Whitaker's story arc is also awkward and mostly a waste of time - mostly about his own relationship with an immigrant female worker. The ending is surprisingly downbeat and leaves one feeling somewhat empty. BoG's Score:
7 out of 10Star Trek actor alert:
Brent Spiner, Data from
TNG, has a small role as the government interviewer in one of the better, more interesting scenes.
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