Trailer Trash: The Happening

Something may or may not happen in this film by M. Night Shama-Lama-Ding Dong...

In the trailer for The Happening, something is happening. Something big. Something bad. Something having to do with but not limited to bees disappearing. Or not! Maybe it’s all a hoax! Who knows what glorious surprise-twist ending awaits us?

The most painful part of the trailer, the part that makes you embarrassed to be watching, is Mark Wahlberg. Don’t get me wrong, I dig Marky Mark. But in The Happening, Mark plays a teacher. A teacher! Isn’t that kind of like Harvey Firestein playing a straight man? You just wouldn’t buy it. Wahlberg has made a career out of playing dumb characters who think they’re smarter than they really are. This might be, and this is a working theory, because Wahlberg is dumb and thinks he’s smarter than he really is. Now he’s decided that he wants to play an actual smart person.

The first line of the trailer is Wahlberg saying, “I don’t know if any of you guys have heard about this article in the New York Times…” Yeah right, buddy. You read the New York Times. Sure.