Review of Beings

Beings (1998)
1/10
Amazingly bad script will delight no one
6 August 2002
Warning: Spoilers
This absolutely dreadful film is released on videotape as THE FAIRY KING OF AR. A textbook example of how not to tell a story, the script suffers from a complete lack of direction or central conflict, and was obviously written by people who believe a "film for children" should not be damaged by the inclusion of a plot. There is absolutely no problem in this story to be solved, so the characters wander about as directed by the scriptwriters, occasionally expressing concern over the immediate situation they're in, then relief when whatever they're supposed to be worried about has quickly removed itself from the scene, so as not to perpetuate any sort of problem which might result in interest by the viewer.

Malcolm McDowell is a relative of Dad, Mom, and their two kids who have inherited a gold mine in Ireland. McDowell is supposed to be scary, because the scriptwriter says so, but since his character doesn't do anything, he isn't. The family immediately and without any effort finds the lost gold mine, which is supposed to contain fairies, who have been introduced in a coompletely unintelligible introductory story told by Grandma, and indeed a young girl with funny hair painted blue does fly onto the scene to represent one of these magical creatures. She, however, doesn't do anything either, after she arrives, so the result of her appearance is that we don't give a flying fig about fairies at all. At this point, since no one else is doing anything, Dad decides to come down with an fatal illness which apparently has no name or symptoms. We don't care about this either, despite histrionics by the children, as encouraged by the director ("Why?? Why??"). After the family digs in the mine for a while, the fairies, big guys with blue latex faces and plastic eyes (?) are released, and one of them, apparently the story's title character, cures Dad's mystery illness, then promptly walks away without interacting with anyone else at all. And at this point, anyone who is still watching this will want to throw something at the TV because they've paid whatever they've paid for this video and gotten absolutely nothing in return.

At no time is this film's amazing deadness intruded upon by anything even remotely interesting. It is an amazing exercise in missing or even deliberately ducking away from any sort of point, a true dirty trick on anyone who has the ill luck to watch it. It is beyond bad; it's nonexistent, and so is not recommended for adults, children, or elves.
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