Goodbye World (2013) Reviews

• Seems there is an apocalypse, but the blabbering just goes on ..

  peterp-450-2987162014-05-28

  If I ever have to go through an apocalypse during my brief existence here on earth, I hope it's one that takes the form as shown here in "Goodbye World". The apocalypse, which was triggered by a rapidly spreading virus in a text message, looks pretty harmless. A few fragments of a panicking and rebellious population. Actually these are images that we get to see everyday in the media. In the distance you can see a huge cloud of smoke. Then two lost soldiers show up who supposedly want to set up a base camp and there is a commune in the vicinity who claim the right to get some medicines. It's rather the relationships between the key players that are apocalyptic. It looks like this movie is the final year assignment from "The Philosophers" , applied in practice. "Goodbye World" is actually about a reunion of some 30'ers who grew up together but eventually went their own way over time. James (Adrian Grenier) and Lilly (Kerry Bishe) are two modern hippies who anticipated that such a global catastrophe would happen and have withdrawn themselves, along with their lovely daughter Hannah, somewhere in the mountains and build a kind of eco-house. An ordinary house with enough stock, medicine, horticulture and energy facilities. The day that the text message "Goodbye World" is sent around the world and a global cyber attack begins so all telephone communications, data communications and electricity supplies fail, Nick (Ben McKenzie) and Becky (Caroline Dhavernas) arrive. Nick is a former business associate of James and had a relationship with Lilly in the past. They also welcome the following old friends : Benji, a radical who did some time in prison for arson and in the meantime gives spirited lectures, Ariel (a sort of groupie of Benji) accompanies him, Laura is an associate in politics and apparently had a sex scandal with some senator and Lev is an intellectual computer expert who could well be the cause of this global cyber attack. Everything starts in a relaxed and friendly way. It looks like an ordinary reunion with quite a bit of drinking during dinner, while raking up old memories. Also, it seems as if they are constantly making use of the home-grown marijuana out of the greenhouse. At times it seems like everyone is looking high after smoking cannabis. After a while tempers start to rise and the mutual conversations become snappy and razor sharp. Everyone is starting to realize that the other changed over time in a certain way and the opinions are no longer synchronized. Eventually we end up in a cacophony of endless drivel and philosophizing about political opinions and personal issues. I found it strange that despite the fact that there is apparently a society falling apart, a motorcycle gang has taken over the local grocery store and charge abnormally high prices, plus two soldiers show up waving their weapons frightfully around and use threatening language, they nevertheless spend their time in a hot tub in the garden and chat about the growth of hair on a testicle. The apocalypse that is going on at that time, suddenly seems a banal and trivial event. I could not get rid of the impression that a cyber attack will not be the cause of our world going down, but rather the terrible navel-gazing and the enlargement of personal issues of some narcissistic individuals will do it. "Goodbye World" is roughly not more than a boring movie with lots of discussions and a conflict that is more situated in the restricted group than in society itself. There is a grand total of five minutes of action in the whole movie, so little toothpicks for the eyes can be useful and necessary. More reviews at http://opinion-as-a-moviefreak.blogspot.be/

• Excruciatingly dull and vapid film that tries to be unique

  Robert_duder2014-05-15

  The best thing I can say about Goodbye World is that it is trying to be different and I can't fault a film for that when we have so much of the same thing being regurgitated. As a novel (I'm not sure if this is based on one or not) I think this would be great because over the course of a nice long book it could do a much better job of establishing the characters. In the film you have a group of very unlikable, incredibly shallow, stoner idiots who aren't doing much of anything. They try to weave a mystery about who caused the apocalypse but essentially they're trying to create this coming of age/reunion/Big Chill type vibe with a background set at the end of the world. This might have almost been better without the apocalypse because really it doesn't play a part in the story at all. It doesn't even matter to this group of idiots. Why they chose to put a little girl in the film (who vanishes and is absent from the latter half of the film) is beyond me. Her parents and all their childhood friends are drug using, alcoholic idiots who find no redemption in this disaster. I did some potential in some of the story arcs but they spend so much time building up nothing that by the time the story comes out in the end its too far gone. I do think the cast is talented but I don't think the script gives them much. Its a big cast but the characters are really awful people and hard to watch. Adrian Grenier is perpetually brooding, angry and slamming things around and never gets to impress leading the cast. Ben McKenzie, who I have always been a fan of, is decent in his role and has a few good scenes but I wanted to see more of the interaction between Grenier and him because I think there could have been a lot of story there. Kerry Bishe is probably the best of the girls but she spends so much time getting high and acting like a 14 year old girl that I begin to understand Grenier's constant anger at the world. Caroline Dhavernas doesn't really get any good moments until nearly the end of the film. Honestly most of the cast doesn't really impress until the last fifteen minutes. In fact the last fifteen minutes of this film are the best. Suddenly we see what this movie should and could have been but instead we have to sit through an hour plus of this group of people sitting around wasting their lives. Gaby Hoffman, Remy Nozik, Mark Webber, and Scott Mescudi are nearly completely wasted in the film and are nothing short of pointless. Hoffman gets her best scene in the end and her character could have been actually a focus of the story. Essentially there is a good idea here buried under an extremely poor script, poor direction, poor editing and even worse character development. Denis Hennelly proves my point that I always say about a director doing his own screenplay. He has little experience behind the camera and his writing needs a lot of work too. It was really bizarre because up until the last twenty minutes of this film I would have probably given it a 2 or less but then all of it comes together and culminates in some really great, intense and emotional scenes but the apocalypse still has very little purpose to this. This could have made a great TV Series as well but there just simply wasn't enough time and effort put into this to make it worthwhile. It ends up being a total miss and even the last scenes aren't worth forcing yourself through this indie dud. 5/10

• Neo-hippies confront Armageddon - Big Chill style.

  tigerfish502013-10-21

  When a computer virus leads to the collapse of civilization, an assortment of 30-something, ex-university pals head for the California hills, where two married friends live in an off-grid, hot-tub utopia with their young daughter. After everybody has arrived at the neo-hippie compound, these former acquaintances are immediately recognizable as reincarnations of the clique who gathered for 'The Big Chill' in 1983. Beginning with an aborted suicide in the opening sequence, 'Goodbye World' plagiarizes or rewrites many of the earlier film's scenes - and the characters even include a doppelganger of Meg Tilly's college-age interloper, who once again critiques her yuppie elders for their self-obsession. It's often said imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but unfortunately the producers of this copycat project forgot to clone themselves a screenwriter with Laurence Kasdan's talent. Although they're surrounded by marauding biker gangs, meth-head neighbors, rogue National Guardsmen and the smoke of burning cities, these privileged airheads respond to the crisis by getting high on weed and reviving old disputes. None of the pointless wrangling over sexual jealousies and past wrongs has any relevance in their apocalyptic new world - it seems to flare up simply because the writers had been told drama requires conflict. As the film nears its conclusion, none of it seems to matter overmuch.

• Possibly the most contrived, painful-to-view movies I've ever seen

  dwightware42014-08-10

  Truly terrible. I have no idea how anyone is rating this 9 or 10 stars. The concept is awesome, the acting is good, the production is flawless....but the dialogue is so cliché and predictable and forced and contrived, it's unbearable. Not to mention this is a story about the meltdown of civilization (that's the setting) but there's nothing about the meltdown of civilization in it. Literally. It's just some people hanging out in a cabin in the woods reliving past drama and bullshit. The fact that the world is crumbling outside of their bubble is a total non- factor in the entire film. I rarely wish I hadn't spent my time watching a movie, but this is one of the few. I want my time back.

• A Return to the State of Nature

  nmmoitoso2014-04-05

  "Goodbye World" is not an apocalyptic film as one thinks of one. The plot does not center on the destruction of infrastructure, landscapes of desolation, or immediate violence as new groups try to fill the power vacuum. "Goodbye World" is a glimpse of the quick dissolution into the state of nature that occurs in human relationships when society collapses. Common to all works of literature and film that deal with the subject of societal breakdown, established conflicts emerge. These include: the desire to hold onto familiar societal values; the relevance of property ownership without governing bodies; at what point does cooperation impede on the individual's ability to survive; and the possible irrelevance of social contracts (marriage)without government. The film subtly captures the characters not just as victims of impending doom but friends and lovers with established and complicated relationships. These established tensions within the relationships serve as a medium to convey the philosophical quandaries that are inherent in the age old political question: What is man in the state of nature? It should not be expected that the rich characters would set aside relational conflicts as the world ends. Such disaster only exacerbates the problems within their relationships. But the aggravation of old wounds and amplification of competing attitudes just makes the ending all the more sweet. Each character must say "Goodbye World" to their old prejudices and paradigms to walk brightly into the future without "the world as we know it."