First off, Trent turns out to be a big fat liar. He told his horrible mother Susan that he was going to go for a walk. So he left the inside couch to sit on the outside couch. I mean, technically he walked there. Trent’s logic does match up with Duffy’s “I can only talk to someone once” rules. Fine. Sorry, Trent. I take back my “liar” remark. But you’re on thin ice, bud.
Trent looks for understanding in the dead eyes of Duffy. When a stray cat is your confidant of choice, something is wrong at home. No matter how many times your mother reminds you that you’re a special boy. “What’s up with you, cat” starts Trent, to a cat he doesn’t know can talk.
Then Duffy shits a black hole from his nose. This dreamless death hole opens up and tells Trent “I’m a TALKING cat,” like Trent is a dummy for not knowing that. Trent is a dummy, but not because he didn’t know a pitch black atrocity flower would blossom from a cat’s face and begin to speak.
Are you ready for the entire mysticism of this film to be vomited out in 25 seconds? Okay. Here is what Duffy says immediately after berating Trent for being thick.
“I can only talk to a person once. And there’s a collar my original owner gave me, buried under a grove of magical trees due north of here. It’s a big fallen tree and just through a thick hedge that looks like a fuzzy green wall. That collar is what lets me help people.”
This subtle foreshadowing caresses our brains like a hook used for mummification. You think they might need to find this buried magical collar later?
Hey, wait. Shouldn’t you be wearing a magical collar to make it work? If this magical collar has some sort of area effect, why aren’t there talking squirrels all over the woods? Also, you kind of glossed over your whole “original owner” thing. Did you murder them? Eh, it probably isn’t important.
Duffy uses his ability to “help people” to tell Trent he has a great imagination. Which is Trent’s big problem, I guess. Not his horrible family, or his twin sister. Twin sister? Man, how can this scene be so full of information when all the others have so little. Spread it out a little, screenwriter Andrew Helm!
This movie treats the words “imagination” and “ambition” as the same thing. Trent doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life, and this is because he can’t imagine what he wants to do with his life. Just look at the want ads! You don’t need imagination to find a career. It’s “what do you want to do,” not “what non-existent job do you want to make up and do?”
Duffy dumps some more logical leaps into the world by explaining that Trent has imagination because he is talking to a talking cat. I suppose I have imagination because I can use a can opener. Makes sense.
The cat leaves Trent with some advice he heard on TV and then is off. We don’t see Duffy leave, because the cat is a horrible actor and won’t do what he’s supposed to. So Trent gets to look around frantically for 5 seconds, implying that Duffy vanished into thin air. Whatever. Trent feels better about his imagination now.
One last note on this scene. The shot of Duffy talking is about .5 seconds long, and used over and over again. This cat is such a horrible actor they couldn’t get him to sit still for more than .5 seconds. So they slowed it down and stretched the .5 seconds out into 5 seconds. You can see a little bug flying in the lower left-hand corner of this clip in slow motion again and again. Just use a still frame if it’s going to be terrible anyway!
What I’m trying to say is, this movie is bad.
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