The Man from Earth (2007)

At his going away party, this cat decides to reveal to his friends and co-workers that he is, in fact, 14,000 years old. This, of course, raises multiple historical and philosophical questions, all of which have already been answered more intelligently in two issues of the comic book The Sandman that told the exact same story. One guy in this movie is especially offended by the idea though, and pulls a gun on Mr. 14,000 Years! "His wife died yesterday," somebody later explains. So what is he doing hanging out with you people? Shouldn't he be handling her affairs or whatever? Maybe he just left her body laying on the floor to be dealt with later in the week, after he's attended all the parties he committed himself to.

"Mr. Smarty-Pants Senior-Discount-Trumping Asshole!"

Anyway, gangsta theatrics notwithstanding, this movie's pretty blah, at least until the part where the main guy reveals that -- yup -- he was Jesus. This, needless to say, is highly offensive, and... What? No, not because I'm religious - because it's so goddamned obvious and lazy. Really, if they had to go this idiot route couldn't they rein it in a little bit and just settle for him being John the Baptist? Or one of the Apostles? How about Simon? Simon never gets any props; this could be his chance to shine. Don't get me wrong, a super interesting movie could be made by ripping off The Sandman by breaking out a 14,000-year-old dude and just letting him talk about his experiences, but it would definitely play a lot better without introducing a gun into the mix or having the dude in question claim to have met and/or been tons of famous people in history. Think about it, how many famous people have you actually met in your life? And I don't mean like the bass player from Cinderella, I mean people so famous that they'll be common knowledge even two hundred years from now. Well, even if you multiply that by 500 I guarantee you'll have a number pretty close to zero, which is how many names our main guy should realistically be able to drop. But of course he's apparently met Christopher Columbus, Vincent "Van" Gogh, and so on and so forth. Give me a fucking break. Just once I wanna see an immortal dude in a movie or comic book who hasn't done anything since the dawn of time except get drunk and fuck bitches. Hey, it may not be deep, but at least it's realistic.

A "smart" movie for people who aren't very smart.