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Feb 4, 2017

The Worst Heterosexist Movie of All Time: "Knowing"

I already have a list of the worst gay movies of all time (the absolute worst is Chuck and Buck), so I'm starting a new list of the worst heterosexist movie of all time.

Heterosexist movies have no gay characters or gay subtexts, plus a hetero romance.  That is, most movies churned out by Hollywood.  It's hard to choose between so many contenders, but I have a suggestion:  Knowing (2009), which is not only aggressively, over-the-top heterosexist, but just plain awful.

In 1959, a classroom of absurdly over-enthusiastic children draw pictures of the future to put in a time capsule (wait -- that's not what time capsules are for).  Except one girl draws long rows of numbers instead.

In 2009, depressed cosmologist John (the hideously ugly Nicolas Cage) asks his advanced astronomy class to write their term papers on whether things happen for a reason, or are just random coincidences.

So basically, evolution or intelligent design?  For astronomy students!  That's absurd. Didn't anyone read this script?

John has an absurd amount of baggage: dead wife, obnoxious son, preacher papa who he hasn't talked to in years, probably due to that evolution/intelligent design thing.

The time capsule opens, and John gets ahold of the rows of numbers.  He deciphers them as the dates, and death tolls, of every major disaster from 1959 to the near future.  The girl was predicting them!

John tries to stop the next disaster by acting like a terrorist, in a scene that had me laughing, although it's not supposed to be funny.

Then he tries to pick up The Girl by acting like a raving lunatic (it works). I haven't picked up a girl since about 1975, but I'm sure I could do a better job than that.  Coincidentally, The Girl has an obnoxious daughter.

All four try to unravel the mystery, especially the last date, a few days from now, with EE instead of a death toll.

Turns out that aliens have been telepathically communicating with kids, giving them long rows of numbers to demonstrate that they know what will happen in the future, and that a global disaster is coming (EE= "Everybody else").

Ok, that's the dumbest warning in history -- long rows of numbers that no one can interpret.  And besides, why warn someone if they can't do anything about it except die?

All of John and The Girl's histrionic machinations come to naught -- the world ends anyway.  So the movie was not only heterosexist, but completely and utterly pointless.

The kicker: the aliens rescue the son and daughter, and maybe some other kids, along with their pet rabbits, drop them off on a world with wheat fields and a tree, and leave.

Wait -- they leave?  Those kids are going to need food and shelter!

I get it.  Boy and Girl and rabbits, ancient fertility symbols.  They're Adam and Eve in a new Eden.

At least the aggressively heterosexist kick in the pants ends the agony of sitting through this mess.

Substantial beefcake can make up for the most inane plotline and the most absurd sacralization of boy-girl romance, but here there isn't any.

There's a collegiate hunk named Sean sitting in the classroom (played by Liam Hemsworth), But, when he's asked to discuss the sun, all he can think of is "It's hot."  An advanced astronomy student?  Too ludicrous to appreciate his hotness!










If you search for "Gareth Yuen" on Google Images, you get someone named Dwayne Cameron instead.

















The obnoxious son is played by Chandler Canterbury, now 18 and kind of cute.

But that's not nearly enough to distract you from the agony.

We have a winner: the worst heterosexist movie of all time.












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