birthdays often cause individuals to access their lives .
are we doing what we want to be doing ?
what happened to our dreams ?
with the new millennium , our collective big birthday , just around the corner , some people are sensing a certain dissatisfaction with their existence .
the old standbys of traditional religion and science aren’t doing it for many anymore and they’re looking for something else .
we’ll be seeing more and more films with a metaphysical theme over the next few years .
ricky hayman ( jeff goldblum ) is having a career crisis .
the programming director for the good buy home shopping network , he’s going to be fired unless sales increase dramatically .
new producer kate newell ( kelly preston ) is supposed to whip things into shape .
when the two are fixing a flat , they almost run down new age pilgrim ” g ” ( murphy ) .
g wanders onto the television set and connects with the viewers by telling them that they don’t really want all that commercial crap .
in some unexplained manner , this causes sales to sour .
ricky is saved .
the movie tries to be too much at once and fails at it all .
it’s not an over-the-top comedy or a heart-warming message of humanity .
it _is_ a mish-mosh of poorly directed scenes made even worse by insipid dialog .
i am willing to put up with preaching from a film , but the messages here are old hat .
you should take time to smell the roses .
selling your soul for cash is a bad idea .
golly .
i’m glad i saw the movie .
i never would have thought of these .
the opportunity to poke fun at the goofy products is mostly missed .
when g takes a chainsaw to the set , there’s an obvious chance for murphy to be hilarious .
it doesn’t happen .
the bits are so subdued and overly-long that there’s only a hint of laughter from the audience .
murphy has changed his roles in recent years and not for the better .
there are hints of promise in this one .
the only time the film picks up even a little is when his shaved-headed character in the long flowing white caftan shows up on screen .
the others are horrendous .
goldblum has episodes of brilliance in his career , but here he seems to have been replaced with a lifeless pod from his ” invasion of the body snatchers ” .
his relationship with kate makes no sense .
they move from antagonism to love somewhere off screen .
preston is as uninteresting as she could possibly be .
somewhere hidden deep inside of this film is about ten minutes of value .
an attempt to satirize stupid television , we get a self-parody instead .