Entertainment, Movies - Air Force Times

That not-so-funny feeling

Almost all of us can lay claim to having had a premonition — a feeling, an inkling, a hunch — about something that hadn’t yet happened, then did. Many times, it’s more of a hope (or fear) that something will happen, followed by an eerie and memorable feeling of validation if events do bounce that way.

In “Premonition,” the premonition experienced by Linda Hanson (Sandra Bullock) is on an entirely different plane. She’s not just feeling it — she seems to be living it.

The film opens with apparent newlyweds Linda and Jim (Julian McMahon of TV’s “Nip/Tuck”) buying their first home together.

We then jump forward an unspecified number of years — at least a decade, since the couple now has two button-cute kids, 10-year-old Bridgette (Courtney Taylor Burness) and 6-year-old Megan (Shyann McClure).

After Jim goes to work, Linda drops the kids off at school and returns home to her daily chores. Then, the local sheriff arrives to inform her that Jim has died in a horrific car wreck.

A stunned Linda must break the news to her kids. Her mother (Kate Nelligan) arrives to help. That night, emotionally wrung out, Linda falls asleep. When she wakes up the next day, Jim is standing in the kitchen with a cup of joe, just like any normal morning.

Linda soon realizes she’s stuck in a surreal twist on “Groundhog Day,” making seemingly random jumps in time between the few days preceding Jim’s death and the few days following it.

As the timeline stops, starts and loops back on itself, clues to the inner life of the Hansons’ marriage are slowly revealed. Contrary to the sunny opening scene, the relationship in the here and now has grown cold and distant. In fact, Linda learns that just before his death, Jim was about to launch an affair with a co-worker (Amber Valletta).

As she tries to piece things together, Linda’s perspective on Jim’s death — the focal point of her time jumps — morphs from numbing sadness to a sort of grim satisfaction that the adulterous rat (in intent, if not yet in deed) might have gotten what he deserved to a late-inning, epiphanic effort to save both her husband and her marriage.

This role hardly plays to Bullock’s acting strengths, but the film stays interesting while building its mystery, and director Mennan Yapo crafts several effectively goosebumpy scenes.

But Bill Kelly’s jumbled script wears thin in the final half-hour, especially when a vague subtheme about religious faith suddenly blows in straight from the left-field bleachers — and blows out almost as fast.

For those who like at least a smidgen of logic in their movies — even if it fits only within a film’s own illogical conventions — the puzzle pieces here will prove impossible to connect.

It’s never made clear, for example, if Linda is slipping between alternate realities or simply having intensely delusional dreams.

If it’s alternate realities, then how is the detritus of each reality — torn phone book pages, dead birds — showing up in the other? If it’s dreams, how is the detritus manifesting in her real world?

In the end, the knots are not worth trying to untie; this is pure allegory about our innate power to change our destinies rather than bobbing along on the currents of fate. As such, you have to make the decision to jump in with both feet.

Or not.

I couldn’t bring myself to fully immerse. The message is worthy, but 95 minutes of moroseness followed by five minutes of dimly glimmering hope followed by a final moment of sap that will stir viewers to more groans than cheers is a bit much to take.

I will say this, though — I had a premonition that “Premonition” would be a so-so flick.

And it came true.

2 stars. Rated PG-13 for violence and adult themes.