Chronicle

Look what you did Blair Witch!!!  Ever since the success of "The Blair Witch Project", Hollywood has been obsessed with making low-budget blockbusters.  Sometimes they succeed, and sometimes they fail about as bad as an ADHD kid during a game of "Go Fish".  When the politically correct group of friends named Andrew, Steve, and Matt come across a radioactive polygon, they find their hormones are going wild!  And no I'm not talking about the dirty stuff.... like playing in the mud.  They develop X-Men-ish powers and have the time of their lives, until Andrew starts going psycho on everybody.  Basically this flick is like a soap-opera with awesome special effects, and enough violence to satisfy even the craziest of loner High Schoolers with large amounts of angst.

The Good:
Just like the time I saw the first X-Men movie, "Chronicle" filled me with an abundance of pleasent day-dreams, about what I would do if I had awesome powers.  The first thing that came to my mind would be to take everything I touch and turn it into ginger, because imagine what would happen if I touched a loaf of bread!!  Usually in movies it's easy to tell who's good and who's bad, but something I admired about "Chronicle" is although Andrew eventually went nuts, you don't hate the kid, instead you pity the guy and want to find a way to help him.  The simplicity of the story-line was also refreshing, because usually in "Superhero" movies there will be a heavily detailed plot that spans a 2 hour period, but in "Chronicle" the story-line is simply what everyone else would do if we had superpowers... We would fly around, move things with our minds, party like it's 1699, and pretend to be Wonder Woman.

The Bad:
I really wanted Andrew's dad to receive some sort of punishment!  I'm not going to give anything away, but lets just say he was a grade A Jerk who needs to receive a punishment as extreme as his crimes, like spending a vacation on a cruise hosted by Rosie O' Donnell.  The only other bad thing about this non-X-Men film is the fact that it's a "Found Footage" movie.  Like I said earlier sometimes it works (see "Last Exorcism", or "Blair Witch"), and sometimes it makes you want to upchuck on the elderly couple sitting next to you, because the camera is shaking too much like it did in "Cloverfield".  Even though "Chronicle" wasn't too bad with the camera shaking all the time, you still have to admit that these "Found footage" movies are getting a little old.  If they don't quit making them soon, then there will be a lot more vomited popcorn and milk duds all over the theater floor.

The Ugly:
due to the fact that I don't usually watch "found footage" movies unless their Horror (which have their moments), I didn't go into this movie with much determination to stay awake.  As the story progressed my wife and I found it to be VERY interesting, and at times extremely entertaining.  Sure this "Superhero" movie is no "Avengers", but it does have more emotion than most big-budget hero flicks out there.

3 1/2 out of 5