.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

If you watched the previews, you would think that Cellular's plot could be written on the back of a postage stamp. Woman gets kidnapped. Woman contacts random male via smashed phone in attic and convinces man to take on crusade of helping woman and saving the day. Oh-boy.

It's not that the trailer was not effective. In fact, it was a better than average mix of tension, action and short storytelling of a woman under desperate circumstances. The problem was primarily in the simplicity of the scenes and it's uncanny development of a story that you could swear you have seen before. It was to no surprise to find that Lawrence Cohen developed the story. The same Lawrence Cohen that was working on the story for Cellular at the same time as he was attempting to sell his script for the eerily similar Phone Booth starring Colin Farrell. I am sure the irony of a phone being the lifeline of a central character of both films was not lost to Cohen, but that is where the comparisons should end.

Cellular starts off with a bang. Actually, a jolt. After Jessica Martin (Kim Bassinger) puts her son Ricky onto a school bus and retreats home, a glass door is smashed and before I could figure which of the two drink holders I was going to utilize, the maid is dead and Jessica is taken at gunpoint. With her captives reasoning still unknown, Jessica is thrown into an upstairs attic. There is but one locked door, few small windows and a phone that is subsequently hit with a sledgehammer. As the kidnappers leave, Jessica begins frantically to work with the broken parts and wires and eventually gets the phone to communicate at random with Ryan (Chris Evans).

Ryan, is your typical California stereotyped male. He is self-centered and a womanizer that wants nothing more in life that to live moment to moment. When he confronts an ex-girlfriend, we are given a glimpse into how shallow this soon-to-be hero actually is. She reminds him that they have split and he tells her how he has changed while paying more attention to the gadget in his hand rather than the person to which he is trying to convince. With his shirt off and tattoos prominent, we don't care much for the person to which the movie's possible happy ending will rely. But things change when Ryan gets the random call from Jessica. First thinking it a joke and later being sucked in like reader of a great page-turner, Ryan soon takes on the crusade of helping Jessica from her captures and thwarting the attempts by the kidnappers to involve the whole family until they get what they are requesting.

Interestingly, the story plays out so that we don't know what they are after until well past the halfway point of the movie. We watch as Ryan tries unsuccessfully to get the police involved, steal a car, shoot a gun inside a cellular store, steal another car.well, you get the picture. However, Casablanca this is not, so the usual thriller obstacles come into play. There is the phone that either runs out of battery power or loses range, there are the traffic accidents caused by reckless Ryan that seem to go unaffectedly behind him, and there is my favorite, a mistaken identity due to two people wearing a similar sports jacket.

While Ryan tries to sort out his countermoves, various developments including corrupt cops, a videotape and the fate of the Martins' son play out to help complicate his efforts. When a desk jockey officer played by William H. Macy gets overly interested in helping solve the case, there ends up more cats and mice all prancing around on their own agendas that a washroom break would require a future viewing to help understand how the pieces all fit together.

But that's a good thing. Cellular becomes an effective thriller by not dumbing down to the audience or revealing plot developments from the power end of a firearm. Instead, director David R. Ellis (Final Destination 2), let's the tension play out in formulaic patterns to a conclusion that is fairly evident long before its unveiling. This may not give us anything new to look or gawk at but at least it doesn't completely deter us from slightly recommending the film to friends.

Cellular's biggest problem is actually not with the action or the plot at all, but rather with the amount of failed humorous situations and dialogue that we are subjected to sometimes in rapid-fire succession. Whether it is a lawyer arguing with a towing company's policy or Ryan yelling at another motorist for talking on the phone while driving, the laughs were forced and badly scripted with only one out of every ten maybe hitting the mark.

Small failures aside, Cellular does get a small recommendation. Movies of this genre usually try to hard and Cellular comes across like an Ernie Els' tee shot - straight and effortless.