It's simultaneously hysterical and sad to watch a film that's not as smart as the concept it's trying to exploit. It's sort of like watching a movie about mathematicians by somebody who can't add or subtract.

"Premonition" should have been called "Amnesia" or maybe just "Stupidity." Anytime a story is told from the point of view of a character whose memory clearly isn't working right -- in this case Linda Hanson (Sandra Bullock) -- it allows the film to do any dumb thing it pleases. Things don't have to make sense to the audience because they don't make sense to the main character. It's a logic cop-out.

After a police officer comes to the door and informs Linda that her husband, Jim (Julian McMahon), has died in a car crash, she appears to start jumping back and forth in time. One minute Jim is dead. The next minute, Jim is alive. At one point Linda even writes down all the events she remembers on a little chart to keep it all straight with intellectual nuggets like "Jim dies!" and "Claire." I now suspect that these three words comprised the entire script.

This is one of those films where a page ripped out of a phone book in the future is explained when the main character goes back in time and either rips out the page herself or watches somebody do it. In a smart movie, those events happen in surprising ways and not usually at the hands of a main character who shows absolutely no interest in changing events. Linda just hurtles along willingly, pointlessly, like a calf headed to slaughter.

While there are many ridiculous events, the dumbest has to be the cuts on her daughter's face. In the future, those cuts get Linda committed because she can't remember how they happened and her mother, Joanne (Kate Nelligan), and her best friend, Annie (Nia Long), seem to think Linda might have done it. However, we learn in the past that the kid ran through a glass door. It's one thing for Linda not to remember, but I think the daughter, who's like eight or so, might speak up about it as mommy is being dragged off to the mad house.

Aside from the complete misuse of the film's central concept, "Premonition" makes sure to heap on enough violin and piano music that one could not possibly miss feeling Linda's pain. Actually, shoving a violin bow through one of my many orifices might not be as painful.

The film's final insult is an ending that's about as inspired as a nap. To try and justify the fact that "Premonition" was apparently made without a third act, the filmmakers toss in some asinine stuff about the importance of faith and how Linda is some kind of lost soul trying to find her way -- bunk that has absolutely nothing to do with anything.

The only thing lost in this film is the script.