Watched a movie last Monday (theater ticket prices are 50% off every Monday nights in Kuwait). Contagion. Starring lotsa stars in their notsa-stellar-but-okay performance. It's all Gwyneth's fault. Or maybe it's the script. While watching it, I remembered Dustin Hoffman's Outbreak movie which tackled the same subject -- spread of an unknown virus . Whereas Dustin's Outbreak was confined in one place, Gwyneth's Contagion was worldwide killing around 35 million people. Nonetheless, I thought Dustin's better.

Because there were lots of stars in Contagion - most of them have, in the past, either won an Oscar's or nominated for Oscar's -- my expectations were high but quite noticeably in the movie, their characters didn't develop well and, during the end credits, I have more questions than answers. Primary of them is this: Why do all of them, except perhaps Laurence Fishburne, looked un-beautified? Gwyneth’s character looked sickly (and freckle-ish), Matt was fat, Marion Cotillard's hair looked too 70’s, Jude Law's character seemed to have a diastema (or maybe not), Kate Winslet's character is typically Kate (like I'm watching her character in The Reader -- except she's not in Germany and it's not the 50's, and she's a CDC doctor, so I didn't quite understand her saintly demeanor), etc.

Or maybe I didn't get the film's message unless it wants to tell us that virus spread rapidly and could potentially annihilate mankind, which really are not new information at all. Or maybe that's what acting is all about -- subdued and contained, not wailing as what we normally see in teleseryes. But should the flow of the movie be subdued as well?

After the movie, I concluded that...

1/ Blogging sells! In the movie, Jude’s character earned millions of hits (and dollars) when he first made known about the virus and it's homeopathic cure. I wonder what would scare people to death and make me controversial...hmmm.

2/ The movie sealed Kuwaiti's aversion for pork. The last part of the movie showed pigs and pig carcass and I can only imagine what were the reactions of the non-pork-eating Kuwaitis while watching the scenes. They must be saying: they deserve to die, them pork-eaters!

3/ If a new virus strain breaks out now with no immediate available cure, the poor will die first unless you kidnap a WHO representative as ransom for a boxful of antidote. Oh, and make sure the antidotes are real and not placebos.

Did it entertain me? In a way....yes. But it's not the sort of movie that I will recommend to my friends. As I said: Dustin's better.