Cellular

In some places Cellular was unexpectedly surprising, but most of the movie is more or less one big cliché. But undemanding entertainment for a Friday evening. Evans is really very cool here while Statham is in a rather untraditional negative role. Also a small role for Jessica Biel was a nice surprise. How extraordinary that these three met a year later in the drama London. (18/05/2007)

If I overlook the fact that it's a bit of an ad for Nokia, I have to say that I quite enjoyed myself for almost a hundred minutes. The big plus is that neither the director, nor the screenwriter, and often not even the actors take it too seriously. The screenplay was passable, of course, the film didn't avoid several convoluted scenes and worn-out clichés, but there was nothing unbearable. The pace was very solid and you never get bored. (26/07/2005)

At the beginning it was a crazy trip. In the introduction I thought that Chris Evans was making fun of me when he deliberately walked around shirtless and tried to seduce Jessica Biel with cheesy pick-up lines. She wasn’t buying it, so I felt like I was going to watch something similar to Beverly Hills 90210. Then we get to see Kim Basinger who has a problem, and at that moment the movie becomes a Nokia commercial. It was probably good at the time but today it’s pretty laughable considering where Nokia is today and what it could do in 2004 according to the movie. I had no idea about many of these functions until watching the movie but okay. Over time, the flick turns into a pretty good action movie with the best the genre has to offer. In the end I was surprisingly satisfied – which is something I didn’t really expect. (20/03/2019)

Cellular is not a serious and suspenseful thriller by any stretch of the imagination. It’s rather just an overwrought joke of a movie with a lot of clichés and donkey bridges. And even some of the characters are copies of other characters from better and more famous films (for example, Macy’s cop is a facsimile of Duvall’s Prendergast from Falling Down). Kim Basinger is bland and Chris Evans is simply just there with his TV-series good looks. On the other hand, if you don’t take it seriously, but merely as a lively 100-minute Nokia commercial, you’ll have a good time, but definitely not a better time than producer Dean Devlin had after signing the contract with the company. (12/10/2004)

It is rare to find such a textbook example of product placement in the film industry as in this little movie. However, I must admit that I wasn't bored at all by this bloated advertisement for NOKIA. The film's advantages are its fast pace and reasonable runtime. Although I am sensitive to poorly written scripts and plot inconsistencies, in this case, these shortcomings didn't bother me. Kim Basinger, as the main star, attracts attention about as much as my grandmother in a nightgown, but even that is not a hindrance. If you don't have high expectations, the film offers a decent chance for entertainment and represents a light genre above average. Overall impression: 65%. (17/05/2007)