Jolt (4/10)

by Tony Medley

91 minutes.

NR.

If this isn’t the dumbest movie to come along, it will do for a while. Linda (Kate Beckinsale) is a psycho with what is defined as a “neurological disorder” that causes her to become extremely violent. She’s treated by Dr. Munchin (Stanley Tucci) who is supposed to be a psychiatrist but every scene in which he appears he is in what looks to be a rundown office, dressed like a bum and needing a shave.

He treats her with an electronic device with which she shocks herself out of the rages. At his encouragement she finds herself in love with a man who is murdered the next day and she spends the rest of the movie trying to find out who murdered him and get revenge.

What follows is utter nonsense. There are plotholes galore, characters who don’t make sense, and situations that could only appear on a Hollywood sound stage. Apparently, it’s only purpose is to show that a woman can fight man after man, many at the same time, and put them down barely working up a sweat.

Directed by Tanya Wexler from a script by Scott Wascha, advertised as a comedy, it’s not funny. Also advertised as a thriller, it is so absurd and ridiculous that there aren’t any thrills. There are even crass “jokes” like Linda’s apartment when she and her new boyfriend are entering that has its number, 6, flipped over so it’s 9. Get it? 69? Wow, these people are really clever.

This is typical of the junk put out by today’s Hollywood, vacuous, anti-intellectual drivel with an unsatisfying denouement that only a stinker like this deserves. Boy, I hope they aren’t telegraphing a sequel with 48-year-old Beckinsale as a superhero.