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 VIDEO
Theatrical preview for 'Bless the Child'

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Bad, bad Satan!

Saintly girl has hellish time in foolish 'Bless the Child'


In this story:

A special child

A creepy guy

A final battle

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(CNN) -- "Bless The Child," starring Academy Award winner Kim Basinger and Emmy Award winner Jimmy Smits, follows the cloven footsteps of a spate of bad movies last year featuring that age-old battle between good and evil.

Consider some of 1999's offerings: Arnold Schwarzenegger went to war against Lucifer in the abysmal "End of Days," Johnny Depp found himself on the horns of a dilemma in Roman Polanski's hopelessly muddled "The Ninth Gate," and Gabriel Byrne and Patricia Arquette bombed big time in "Stigmata" (1999).

What were they thinking? Guess the devil made them do it.

The devil works overtime in this latest film, too. Chocked with every bad satanic cliche imaginable, "Bless the Child" is like "Rosemary's Baby" (1968) on steroids.

A special child

Basinger stars as Maggie O'Connor, a nurse in a busy New York City hospital. She leads a very orderly life. Then her younger sister Jenna (Angela Bettis) shows up at her door strung out on drugs, toting a nine-day-old baby girl she's named Cody.

Jenna dumps the child on Maggie and promptly disappears. Six years later, Maggie and Cody (Holliston Coleman) are now a family. Cody has been diagnosed as autistic -- but she's not.

Cody has special gifts. She was born under a rarely seen star that hadn't shown up in the night sky since the birth of Jesus 2000 years ago. Yep, that star!

Unfortunately, there are no wise men in this movie. There were also no wise men involved when this film got a green light.

The script, by husband/wife writing team Clifford and Ellen Green, doesn't actually imply that she's the second coming -- that would have been much more interesting. No, apparently Cody's just a child who will grow up to be a great leader and bring millions of people to God.

A creepy guy

Suddenly Jenna shows up out of the blue, all clean and sober, with a mysterious new husband in tow. He's Eric Stark (Rufus Sewell), the leader of a self-help group called the "New Dawn Foundation."

Of course, the group is only a front for a cult of Satanists led by the evil and charismatic Stark. Don't be fooled: Stark has about as much charisma as a ham sandwich.

The plot thickens when Maggie meets a young woman dressed in black with mascara dripping down her cheeks. This is Cheri, a disgruntled former cult member played by a misused Christina Ricci.

She tells Maggie what everyone in the audience already knows: Don't let that Stark creep get his dirty hands on Cody.

Guess what? Cody is kidnapped by Stark in the next scene.

Stark's plan is to turn Cody toward the devil and use her powers for evil. If she refuses, he'll kill her.

But suddenly Maggie has a powerful ally -- FBI Agent John Travis (Smits), who's drawn to the case in his investigation of a series of child murders.

He shows up just in time, too. Maggie walks blindly into jeopardy time and again, and time and again she is saved by either mysterious forces (angels who all look like Swedish Christmas tree ornaments, with blond hair and flawless features) or Travis (who is decidedly not Swedish).

A final battle

So the stage is set. The epic battle for Cody's soul -- and the world's salvation -- begins as Maggie and Travis race to find the little girl and defeat the devil.

It's easy to keep track of the action here. Whenever something good happens, it's heralded with white light and inspirational music swelling in the background. Bad stuff comes in strange black shapes with dark and foreboding music. Still confused? Watch for hundreds of swarming rats.

A profound belief in God requires a blind leap of faith; Hollywood film scripts, however, don't get the same privilege. It's so much nicer when feature films make sense and have more depth than your average made-for-cable-TV movie.

"Bless The Child" opens nationwide on Friday. Rated R. 110 minutes.



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