On paper, an end-of-days movie starring Nicolas Cage sounds kind of awesome and hilarious. (For the sake of argument, let's pretend Knowing never happened.) If nothing else, the idea of Cage running around and yelling at panicked civilians should be a gold mine for unintentional comedy. Sadly, his new movie Left Behind does its damnedest (no pun intended) to make sure Cage doesn't get one single freak-out moment, or really any human interaction at all. Instead, he's locked up in a 747 captain's cabin for the better part of two hours.

"I'm getting on this plane. You're about to be LEFT BEHIND. Amirite?"

If the Left Behind title sounds familiar to you, that's because it's a remake of the 2001 film starring Kirk Cameron. The original also spawned a couple of direct-to-video sequels. All of them are of course based on a series of apocalyptic novels by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye. Essentially, the books are a modern-day interpretation of the biblical rapture -- the transporting of all Christians to Heaven, as all Hell breaks loose (literally) on Earth.In the new Left Behind movie, Cage plays Captain Rayford Steele (don't let the badass name fool you), a commercial airline pilot who was supposed to celebrate his birthday with his family, but instead gets a last-minute assignment to fly from New York to London -- a trip that should only take him one night to get there and one night to get back. The thing is, Rayford's extending his stay in London to get away from his wife (Lea Thompson), who's been a drag ever since she found Jesus and started pushing her beliefs on the rest of the family. However, this also means Rayford will be missing his daughter, Chloe (Cassi Thomson), who flew in from college just to be with him on his birthday. Wah, wah...To make Rayford seem like even more of a jerk, he's also carrying on an affair with one of his flight attendants, played by Nicky Whelan. (Adultery -- check!) Meanwhile, Chloe plans to confront her mom about her religious beliefs in an attempt to sway her back to reason. (Not honoring thy mother -- check!)There's also Buck Williams (Chad Michael Murray), a dashing, heartthrob journalist who happens to be on Rayford's flight. This is the part Cameron played in the original movie, so... Murray's an improvement, I guess. Of course, Murray is also able to hit it off with Chloe for all of five minutes before he boards his flight, thus establishing an inexplicable romance between them.Honestly, I think the weirdest part about Left Behind is that it assumes you don't know what movie you're watching -- as if the "vanishing" to come is some big surprise for the audience. In actuality, it takes over 30 minutes for the rapture to start. Prior to that, it's a lot of talking: talking at the airport, talking on the plane, talking on the phone -- just a metric ton of talking. About what, you ask? Their mundane lives mostly. The kicker is, it's all basically setup for stuff that never pays off because -- OMG, the rapture's happening!Unfortunately, even after the rapture starts, Left Behind never picks up steam. You'd think, with millions of people vanishing off the face of the planet, the world would immediately fall into chaos (riots, break-ins, muggings, etc.). And granted, there's some of that at the mall, where Chloe happens to be when her kid brother disappears right before her eyes. But the overall temperature of the room is less "Holy f***ing s***!" and more "Gee willikers, would you look at that?" That's a soft PG-13 for you.Meanwhile, on the plane -- where most of the film takes place, by the way -- it's even more of a snoozefest. In addition to Rayford and Buck, we're introduced to a dozen more passengers on the plane, all of whom have their own sad sob stories burrowed in sin. Post-vanishing, there's the greedy businessman, the drug addict, the gambler and -- get this -- a devout Muslim. There's also a scientist on-board, but he's quickly brushed off by everyone else once he starts proposing "wacky" theories like a rift in the space-time continuum. (Because that's impossible, right?)From there, it's even more talking, as everyone tries to wrap their heads around what's happening. Suffice to say, the story is spread unbearably thin, probably because it only uses the first book as a basis. In truth, the whole movie probably could have been the first act. I have it on good authority that all the good stuff happens after the boring rapture part: seven years of war, demon monsters, Jesus riding in on horseback with a flaming sword -- all that jazz. Alas, there's none of that here.