September 07, 2007

MOVIES: Disturbia (D.J. Caruso, 2007)

Well, I suppose if you must make a teenage version of Rear Window, this turned out about as well as you could hope.

Shia LaBeouf (in the Jimmy Stewart role) stars as Kale (Kale? Really?), a Troubled Youth (pretty much everyone in this movie is a Standard Type, as opposed to an actual character) who is spending the summer under house arrest after slugging one of his teachers; if he goes more than 100 yards away from his monitor, his ankle bracelet beeps and the cops show up. So what's a bored kid to do? Why, spy on the neighbors, of course.

Kale begins to suspect that his sinister neighbor, Mr. Turner (David Morse, in the Raymond Burr role) is a serial killer, so he sends Goofy Sidekick Ronnie and Hot Chick Neighbor Ashley (Aaron Yoo and Sarah Roemer, sharing the Grace Kelly and Thelma Ritter roles) out to follow Turner around the neighborhood, bust into his garage, and so forth.

The movie's competently made, aside from a final confrontation sequence so poorly lit that it's nearly impossible to follow. And the two principal roles are certainly well cast. LaBeouf is an immensely likable guy, and -- though this movie doesn't give him much chance to show it -- a fine actor with enormous potential; no one does ambiguous villainy as well as Morse.

But it's all so terribly redundant. Rear Window is a classic movie, and it holds up perfectly well today; there's no need for a remake, especially one that's so content to merely plod through the paces. Most shameful of all, nowhere in the credits does Disturbia even acknowledge that it is a Rear Window ripoff.

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