41 - +1 (Plus One)

    A freak occurrence involving meteors, a power transformer, and lights results in everyone facing a duplicate of themselves.  This is set against a couple breaking up, and a huge college party.
    I've got this massive interest in duplicates of people.  I've probably talked about it before.  This plot seemed tailor-made for my interests.
    And yet… I come away feeling a little let down.
    The premise is good.  Even the execution is fairly good.  It's the last act that takes some more considerable missteps.  Because of how the story has been set up, the primary plot is not the duplicates.  If anything, that seems to be a secondary story.  The main focus is on the couple breaking up, and the guy making efforts to reconcile.  This is the main mistake in this movie.  A simple breakup story is easy to manipulate, and it gives the lead some motivation to sort things out, in spite of the confusion.  But it's nowhere near as interesting as the duplicates.
    The last act starts off pretty well, with everyone starting to realize their situation, and some different methods of dealing with it.  There's a small bit of dialogue that actually brings some depth to the story.  But the main problem comes when...

Of course, big spoilers….

    The group of duplicates skips forward in time, periodically.  This places them closer and closer to the original people.  Once they catch up, it just triggers a massive fight, with each person fighting their duplicate to be the only person alive.  Only a few people - the main characters - avoid their duplicates and manage to keep from killing.
    Then there's another time shift, and the duplicates are absorbed back into the original.  The implication is that everyone who killed their duplicate now feels both terrible about killing, and feels like they're missing a part of themselves.  Not a bad idea.
    But… this is glossed over very quickly.  And I have a hard time believing that everyone would be so enthusiastically willing to kill their duplicate.  At least there's one person who talks to their counterpart, and seems to really like it.
    The ideas in this movie are really clever, and I'm impressed with how well the script manages a single house location with loads of characters.  It's just a shame that such a clever premise didn't get the execution it deserved.