CineBad!!!

OK, OK– this movie isn’t set in the future, but I’m still calling it “Futuristic.” So sue me! It didn’t really fit into any of the other categories so well.

This is the story of a small town in the mountains called “Springville.” The people there get all their water from the same spring– a spring with magical healing properties. Sick people who swim in the spring are instantly healed. People who drink the spring’s water can live indefinitely, in a perpetual state of youth and beauty. However, nothing lasts forever, not even in a made-for-TV movie. Long ago, the residents of Springville signed a “covenant” that promised no resident would live to be more than 100 years old. Each citizen, on the morning of his 100th birthday, must “cross the stream,” i.e. drown himself in the fountain, with the aid of his closest friend. They even throw an all-night party and everything! It’s very cute.

Enter Dennis Conway (MacLaughlan) and his son Nick. They were driving through the mountains when they encountered a strange couple in a vintage car, stuck in the ditch. While towing them out, they couldn’t help but notice that their trunk was full of bottled water. After the strange couple takes off, Nick discovers one of their bags still in the ditch. So, they decide to be good Samaritans and return it.

When they reach Springville everyone treats them very strangely. Josh, the mean cop (Pearl,) follows their every move and interrogates them. There’s no motel in town. The mysterious couple aren’t home, and the cops are surveying their house. Dennis gives the backpack to the cops and decides to head out in the morning.

Unfortunately, over breakfast the next morning, a truck carrying tree trunks dumps its load all over his son, Nick– and Sophie, the pretty lady at the diner (Eastwood) turns out to be a doctor. Nick is rushed to the Springville Hospital, where, big surprise, his father and the doctor fall in love. OK, but why is there a hospital with doctors in Springville? Why not just truck all the sickies directly to the Spring?

Meanwhile, Josh is tailing the mysterious couple. When he finally catches up with them at a motel, their skin has taken on the texture of fried chicken, due to lack of Springville water. Josh sneers “Happy Birthday!” before suffocating them with pillows.

Dennis can’t help but wondering about the mysterious couple he pulled out of the ditch, and about why no one in Springville will tell him about them. Soon he’s looking for clues everywhere. He rifles Sophie’s desk and discovers all her snapshots. Like a good little girl, she has little framed pictures on her desk representing all the major decades of the 20th century– Sophie in front of a WWII bomber jet, Sophie at a 50’s cocktail party, Sophie in bellbottoms… Dennis is indignant. “I just want to ask you something! What were the Roaring Twenties like?! And the Great Depression– was it really that depressing?!?!”

Now that Dennis knows the Springville secret, he wants to stay there and live with Sophie. But will the residents of Springville allow him to stay? And what about Gus, the mechanic with whom Dennis is forming a close, homoerotic friendship– will Dennis be able to help him “cross the stream?” And what is Sophie’s dark secret? You’ll just have to stay up late at night watching cable and eating Cracker Jax to find out!