I’ll start out by saying that anyone watching this movie should bear in mind that John Travolta is a devotee of the Church of Scientology, and it shows. Phenomenon, the story of a small-town man who becomes a genius, is syrupy, stupid propaganda.
George Malley is an everyday Joe who sees a UFO/light in the sky and soon afterwards becomes a genius. As it turns out, these lights and the subsequent IQ soar are a result of an inoperable brain tumor, which in itself is a far-fetched idea. George refuses to contribute to science by allowing doctors to examine his brain and remains a peace-loving supergenius figure amidst the backwoods California townspeople and migrant workers. It was like a terrible collision of two movies I watched the same night: The Dead Zone and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, plus some of Flowers for Algernon and Powder thrown in for good measure.
The plot is terrible and contrived. The acting is, for the most part, bad. The theology is screwed. The dialogue is weak and saccharine and seems to advocate cannabalism, among other things. I haven’t disliked a movie this much since The Core, which at least had its funny moments. The only amusing moments in Phenomenon come when one of George’s friends tries to learn Portuguese in attempts to hire a housekeeper.
The Church of Scientology has no god, and John Travolta’s George Malley is a miserable excuse for Mohammad, Buddha, or Jesus. He predicts earthquakes, memorizes Portuguese, revolutionizes solar power, and a host of other feats including telekinetic demonstrations that are explained with the phrase “All things are made of energy…” which is really terribly misleading. (On an essential level, “energy” and “matter” are made of the same stuff, but “energy” and “matter” are not the same thing and it’s horribly fallacious to imply that they are.) According to this film, all people are connected, much like a grove of trees with an interlocked root system. Affecting the world around you is merely a question of how much you use your brain, how “enlightened” you are, apparently. Of course, all of the opponents of these theories are made to look as benighted and backwards as the residents of George Malley’s town.
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