We go to the movies knowing that it's not real. If you want proof, next time you're watching a movie, or a preview -- focus on how the actors move their mouths and eyes while they talk, and then try to imagine someone in real life talking that way. Real people don't talk like that. And that's cool. We go to the movies to escape our real lives, to see things from another person's point of view, or from a different context. We ask to be deceived that it's real. Or just for a rush.  

But sometimes it goes too far and the illusion breaks. Like an airplane stalling in midflight. They're running along great, you're in the plot, and all of a sudden something happens that doesn't make sense in the context of the story, and the trance is gone. All of a sudden you find yourself in a movie theater wondering how you got there, when you were in the movie just a few instants before. 

And some movies never get you into the zone at all. You never even get liftoff.  

Badly Written and Extraordinarily Stupid (I refuse to learn the actual name of this movie) never gets started. You never feel anything for the characters, yet how hard would that be, given the circumstances. They jerk you around, with cheap pictures of airplanes that might be flying into buildings. Blown up photos that don't look like people who fell or jumped to their death from the WTC. A kid's scrapbook that looks like it was produced by an ad agency working for Coca Cola or Land's End. A kid who might be feeling real emotions, or might be suffering from a disease. They won't commit. They won't actually give you a story to hang the scenes on. No takeoff.  

I get disturbed just thinking about the events of 9/11, yet this movie that had two-plus hours never got my emotional meter to budge. It's amazing that this picture made it out of the movie factory, much less debuted on Christmas Day.