Quick Review: Contagion

Because of circumstances (both beyond and within my control, to be honest) it took me a while to get around to seeing "Contagion." It wasn't really worth the wait. It's competent enough, the acting is mostly good, and for some reason I laughed at Gwyneth Paltrow getting sick, dying, and being cut open and autopsied...well, her character did, anyway. But it's rather boring and cluttered with too many characters. Paltrow's character, married to Matt Damon's character, is probably in the film the least. She picked up a new, deadly disease while on a business trip in Hong Kong, stopped in Chicago to cheat on her husband (thus passing on the virus there) and then returned home to Minneapolis, dying days later. As the virus spreads both in the United States and worldwide, scientists race to try and contain it while society starts falling apart. We're supposed to follow various plots and characters in Minneapolis, Hong Kong, the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, and probably some other places as well. After a while I just sort of stopped caring. That's a little scary since the events come off as rather plausible. My grade: C.