Zoom

Unless your kids are jonesing to see Zoom, save your dollar for a better movie.
DMR gives it a D+.

I can hear the bullet points from the pitch meeting now: “Let’s get Tim Allen, Courteney Cox, Chevy Chase, Rip Torn and a couple of young actors from hot TV shows like The OC and 24, with a script from the guy who wrote Elf, and make a comic X-Men for kids.” Not an original premise, but not a bad one either.

Unfortunately, all that talent gets flushed down the toilet in the uninspired kids movie Zoom.

The problem isn’t that the script isn’t original. There’s not too many truly original stories left; the Greeks, Shakespeare and Harold Lloyd have seen to that. The problem is that the movie is badly executed starting with a weak and confused script and extending to the direction. The principal actors, all of whom are skilled comedians, are stuck with wildly lame dialogue and situations. Worse, they tried to fix it in “post” with scattershot editing and unimaginative special effects. The result is lipstick on a pig.

Zoom isn’t unwatchable. Its problem, from my point of view, is that I measured it against what it could have been and it came up well short by comparison.

Zoom is rated PG for “brief rude humor, language, and mild action.”

Dollar Movie Review gives it a grade of D+.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Because Zoom is clean and sans offensive language and situations it received a one-half grade bonus. Without that bonus, I would have graded it as a solid D.