text: Tempest is based on the classic Shakespearean work of the same name, but bears little resemblance to its source material.<br /><br />It masquerades as being as cerebral as its namesake, but instead is a jumbled, convoluted, and hackneyed exercise in tedium. The original probed the premise that people have an evil side, which would be destructive if unchecked. Here you just get an uninteresting mid life crisis (yawn) goof ball who is having everything go wrong in his personal and professional life. He becomes endowed with a supernatural power that he uses to try to control his environment; in other words: to get his own way.<br /><br />Every few minutes, after something else in his pathetic life goes wrong, he finds a secluded place and starts babbling "Show me the magic!" while waving his hands around and making a "serious concentration" expression. From the way these scenes are shot, it looks like he's trying to turn bugs into other kinds of bugs. Turning a spider into a cockroach, maybe, but by this time, you really don't care.<br /><br />The story has him bolt from his life with his daughter to a Greek island somewhere, then have a awkward relationship with some girl he meets, one of the dullest romances ever committed to film. The story just bogs down and moves at a slower and slower pace. You are never given any reason to like or dislike anyone.<br /><br />I'll give this a 2 because of the beautiful Greek location shots and the semi-optimistic conclusion (although it isn't clear if the tempest power brought this ending about or not). The spirit of Shakespeare's work has been captured much better in other movies; one notable example is "Forbidden Planet," which gave credence to how the power gets out of control.<br /><br />As for this "Tempest", its only magic is to cure insomnia.