My usual modus operandi upon the conclusion of a film I have watched at home is to open up the old computation device, look up the International Movie Database (IMDB) page for said film, and fire up the Google machine for any additional information.  When I got to Google and typed in 65, today’s motion picture, I was given the following piece of an audience review: “‘65’ is a captivating sports drama. . . .”  Perhaps this was written by an artificial intelligence that confuses basketball with dinosaurs?  Or maybe somebody saw that it was produced by LeBron James’ company and, without looking at trailers or seeing it, made all the wrong assumptions.  Regardless, this was not the only thing about 65 that had me laughing in moments probably not intended as mirth.

I will get to another unintentionally funny part in 65 soon.  In the meantime, we start “prior to the advent of mankind.”  My Catholic senses were piqued for a moment before I realized this statement makes no sense.  I say this because the first characters to which we are introduced are Mills (Adam Driver), his daughter Nevine (Chloe Coleman), and her mom (Nika King).  They are clearly humans.  Granted, they live on another planet, but if it talks like a duck and walks like a duck, it must be a homo sapiens.  Google says that plural is correct, by the way.  Anyway, enough about the potential ramifications for evolution or intelligent design.  Mills is a pilot, and his job is to take explorers into the cosmos on expeditions.  Typically, his missions last a few weeks.  However, because Nevine is in need of special treatment for a disease that is apparently killing her, he agrees to go out for a two-year mission because it means extra money.  I am going to jump ahead here because this is a truly half-baked portion of a quarter-baked plot.  Later on, we are told Nevine dies.  We do not see it, and at some point in time Mills get this message, even though this is something also not shown to us.  It is with a heavy heart that Mills departs from his dying daughter.  At some other unspecified time after this, his spaceship wanders into an uncharted asteroid field.  He is alerted to the danger, but is unable to prevent them from crashing on an unknown planet.  He survives the impact, but the rest of the passengers, who had been in hibernation during their trek, are killed as their pods plummet to the ground.  Mills comes to, heals the wound to his stomach with some magic space medicine, and goes outside to survey the damage.  What he finds is disturbing: the bodies of the passengers strewn around him.  Another cause for alarm is the fact that he is not alone.  He has become stranded on our planet the eponymous number of million years ago, as we find out when they show us the title.  It is about a half hour into this movie and they are finally getting around to telling us what it is called?  I chuckled at this moment because, in addition to the silly timing, they make it seem like a huge revelation.  I would have thought the trailers would have clued everyone into the situation, but I digress.  Devastated over the situation, Mills is about to blow his brains out when he is alerted to the fact that one hibernation pod is intact.  This belongs to the child Koa (Arianna Greenblatt).  Mills brings her back to the remains of the ship, and goes out to do more reconnoitering while she recuperates.  Using a device that can seemingly do everything, he is able to spot on a nearby ridge an intact escape vessel which could be their ride off the planet.  He seems to have the skills, and technology, to get them to their destination despite the scores of ravenous beasts that could eat them along the way.  I should add, too, that Koa does not speak Mills’ language.  I would say this is a challenge, but he opts for the time-honored tradition of speaking louder to somebody lacking comprehension in order to be understood.  When this does not work, they resort to some of the basics and hand signals.  She is evidently afraid to go anywhere, and one of the words she is able to communicate is “family.”  He gets her to go along by indicating that they are on the other side of the mountain where they need to go, which is a lie because he knows they are dead.  In any case, he is eager to see that she gets away because she seems to remind him of Nevine, I guess.  The emotional dynamic between them changes a lot.  Anyway, off the go, traipsing through the primeval forest, and dodging dinosaurs along the way.  Clearly, I am glossing over a series of misadventures, which really do not matter until they finally get to their goal.  In another instance of ridiculousness, they happen to be on earth at the moment the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs is about to hit.  Thus, they are getting strapped into their vehicle as chunks of flaming rock are beginning to slam into the ground.  It disrupts their ability to take off, sending their ship over a cliff and landing upside down at the bottom.  At this angle, they cannot take off.  Making matters worse is the interest this has drawn from a few tyrannosaurus rexes.  They bash away at them, forcing Mills to jump out and shoot at them.  They do help, though, by incidentally (one might say conveniently) righting the spaceship.  Mills tells Nevine to launch while he draws them away, but is eventually saved by her.  Thus, they are able to get into space before going the way of the dinosaur.  The end credits show the last tyrannosaurus rex that Nevine helped take down pointlessly rotting.  I say “pointlessly” because you might expect to see it being dug up by paleontologists, but no.  The end.

Actually, come to think of it, seeing somebody unearthing this particular set of dinosaur bones at the end of 65 and finding the weapon with which Nevine stabbed it would have also been silly.  Because this was the tone for me, this is why I expected it.  But, since nobody said, wait, maybe we should not pursue such a dumb idea for a movie while it was in development, here we are.  In the last paragraph I touched on how it mentions at the beginning how this takes place “before the advent of mankind,” drawing my attention.  When it comes to evolution, non-Christians get hung up on a perceived line between their view of science and Creationism.  To be fair, there are those on the opposite end of the spectrum.  These are Christians who think the Earth is only a few thousand years old because they have done the Bible math.  In these matters, Catholicism could best be described as being in the middle.  If nothing else, the Faith is not anti-science.  I have said this in other reviews, and I will probably say it again, but the Big Bang Theory was initially conceptualized by a Catholic priest.  The Church has also said that evolution is not completely at odds with Scripture. Yet, if you look at the sides in these debates, you would think they are like democrats and republicans.  I bring this up because a film like this one would seem to suggest that not only are some evangelical Christians incorrect, but humans have been around for a longer time than previously thought, which would also be inconsistent with the Bible.  There are those out there that would accept us coming from space.  I also get that this is a work of science fiction.  Still, my self-proclaimed job is to analyze such things that bump up against matters of Faith.  So, here you go.

65 is bad, sometimes hilariously so.  At the same time, I now wish I had seen it instead of Scream VI.  At least with 65 I could have seen some genuine acts of heroism instead of serial killers, both among the antagonists and protagonists.  I was also treated to a brief pro-life moment in 65 when Koa and Mills save a baby dinosaur from a tar pit . . . only to watch it get eaten a few seconds later.  Sigh.