Fantastic!

As Good As It Gets

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Screenwriter Larry Cohen has over the past few decades churned out a number of screenplays that are offbeat and entertaining. However, not even Cohen is always perfect, and "Messages Deleted", which he scripted, is a big disappointment. The movie goes wrong in a number of ways. The main protagonist is a big turn-off - he's annoying in ways that are not interesting, and it's hard to be on his side as his predicament gets worse. He's also stupid, doing things no person of reasonable sense would do that get him further in trouble. Though the police are also stupid as well, missing some obvious clues that would show them that the protagonist is innocent of the charges against him. The movie has passable production values for a low budget independent Canadian production, but you don't go to a movie just for that.

Joel Brandt (Matthew Lillard) is an efficient screen writing professor in the university but has never succeeded as a screenwriter. When Brandt receives a weird phone call asking for help, he believes that it is a prank of his best friend Adam Brickles (Michael Eklund) and he deletes the message. When he is having a conversation with his girlfriend Claire (Chiara Zanni) on the sidewalk of a bar, the body of the caller falls off a building in front of them on the sidewalk. Brandt tells to the Detective Lavery (Deborah Kara Unger) and Detective Breedlove (Serge Houde) that are in charge of the investigation about the call that he had received and he becomes a suspect.When he receives another mysterious call from a woman also calling for help in his answering machine, he goes to the location and finds that she is dead. Brandt becomes the prime-suspect of Detectives Lavery and Breedlove when they find that the message was deleted from his answering machine. When Brandt discovers that the killer is following the only screenplay that he had sold to the cinema industry, "Senseless Killing", he tries to guess the next move of the serial-killer."Messages Deleted" is a senseless, annoying and absurd thriller about a screenwriter that is informed about murders that are following a screenplay that he had written stolen the idea from another screenplay.Joel Brandt is irritating, hysterical, clumsy and imbecile, and takes all the possible wrong attitudes along the story. The plot is based on deleted messages in times when it is possible to have traceability of phone calls, technical means to retrieve a deleted message and surveillance (bugging) a phone number. The stupid open conclusion is never clear but the worst is the use of the word "cliché" along the story. The writer had the intention of making a cult-movie but unfortunately he has totally failed. My vote is one (awful).Title (Brazil): "Mensagens Deletadas" ("Deleted Messages")

If the movie was released sometime between the moment everyone have a cellphone in the 90's and the beginning of police forensics like in the "CSI" TV Series, I would have certainly enjoy this movie.Movie started good, until the first murder. Detectives are there, but there's no forensics work at all to find out clues about the suspects, no fingerprints verification, no phone records verification, just suspicions and coincidence that Joel appeared on the 2nd crime scene, and listening to the message on Claire's answering machine: "That's our guy! Release the suspect!"I mean, c'mon, he's a professor at University, he should know better about all the common errors which leads to getting caught, but he just do everything for evidence to lead to him, despite above mentioned sloppy detective work.Also, after the 2nd murder, why didn't he activate the function to forward all his calls to his cellphone? When a stranger is in a hurry to go to the airport but reluctantly give you a half-way lift for 100$, WHY would you trust that person to wait for you, regardless how much you give him?Something that ticked me off, back at Millie's place, it is mentioned the original script was reflecting reality, and page 76, it is what's happening now. But Joel wasn't a bit curious to read further in order to figure out what's gonna happen next and find ways to avoid everything bad in the script.Avoid this movie, unless you're bored and have nothing else to watch but a light crime movie like this one. I originally give it a 1 out of 10, but I'll give a 2 instead for Gina Holden and Chiara Zanni.

"Messages Deleted" is hyped by the fact that it is from the same writer as "Phone Booth" and "Cellular". Do not expect the same quality, because "Messages Deleted" has certainly it's flaws. The two leading actors both had their greatest success in the mid 90's: Matthew Lillard in "Scream" (1996) and Deborah Kara Unger in "The Game" (1997). Both were in ten movies or so since than, but none of them were really big hits, except for the "Scooby Doo" movies (Lillard). In general, the acting is OK but not great, a little unconvincing at times. The story is by-the-numbers at very far fetched. It gets more unbelievable by the minute and it is strange that the main character does not suspect the two friends around him for even a minute. Elements from "Basic Instinct" and "Secret Window" are put in the story but the result is far from exciting or suspenseful. The surprise ending won't be a real surprise for most people. Not an awfully bad movie, just very average and somewhat unsatisfying. Could have been so much better..