New Releases
THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY It was only a matter of time before Douglas Adams’ cult phenomenon – which had already moved from radio to print to television – would eventually complete the journey by edging into cinema. Yet as a movie, H2G2 is only a mixed bag, crammed with many inspired bits but never coalescing as a whole. The picture gets off to a great start, as drab human Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) learns from his alien pal Ford Prefect (Mos Def) that Earth is about to be destroyed to make room for an intergalactic freeway. These early passages present the film at its finest: Reminiscent of both Monty Python and The Fifth Element, they embody a cheeky spirit that becomes harder to appreciate once the picture begins to buckle under the weight of an overly busy plot. Zooey Deschanel is appealing as Trillian, the only human besides Arthur to make it off our planet alive, and Alan Rickman adds the right measure of resigned weariness as the voice of the perpetually depressed robot Marvin. But once Sam Rockwell, one of the most annoying actors in the world – make that galaxy – appears on the scene as the manic Zaphob Beeblebrox, his grating turn sucks most of the fun out of the movie and leaves us sifting through the ashes of good intentions. Stay through the closing credits for an amusing final gag.
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HOUSE OF WAX For $14.96 or less, film fans can pick up the DVD for the original House of Wax, which not only includes the classic 1953 version starring Vincent Price but also its predecessor, 1933’s Mystery of the Wax Museum (featuring King Kong scream queen Fay Wray). You won’t get that kind of deal if you drop dough on this new version, which manages to be even worse than the 21st century renditions of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror (the mind boggles). My contempt for this film is so great, I’m reluctant to even call it a film, as that designation automatically places it in the pantheon of works by Welles, Hitchcock, Bergman and even Ed Wood. Suitable only for unemployable teens and speech-slurring rednecks (the baseball cap-wearing yahoos seated in front of me were certainly vocal in their support of the picture), this follows a group of dim-witted college-age kids as they find themselves lost in the Louisiana wilds. They stumble across a backwoods burg and quickly become slasher fodder for the town’s resident madmen, twin brothers (played by Brian Van Holt) who subdue their victims and then encase them in wax. It takes an eternity of running time for the kids to reach the town, and even after the slaughter begins, director Jaume Collet-Serra (yes, another commercial and music video hack making his feature film bow) and scripters Chad and Carey Hayes still take time out for an obligatory interlude that allows co-star Paris Hilton a chance to striptease down to her undies. Sadistic beyond compare – for starters, the heroine (24‘s Elisha Cuthbert) has her index finger sliced off by pliers and her lips glued shut – this House has been constructed by mercenaries, not moviemakers.
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN Aside from a smattering of one-note villains such as Brendan Gleeson’s brutish warrior and Jon Finch’s hypocritical man of the cloth, everyone is so damn noble and respectful in director Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven, a p.c. drama about a period in world history that was anything but noble and respectful. Set during the Crusades, this dutiful slog through revisionist history stars Orlando Bloom as Balian, a tormented blacksmith (his wife committed suicide after the death of their child) who learns that his father (Liam Neeson) is a revered knight and decides to accompany him to Jerusalem. There, he finds himself in the middle of a growing feud between the Christians and the Muslims, both of whom lay claim to the holy city. Believing that all religions can co-exist peacefully, Balian and his allies (among them Jeremy Irons and David Thewlis) try to maintain order, but the more zealous Crusaders will do anything to force an all-out war. Comparisons to recent sword flicks like Troy and Scott’s Gladiator are natural, but despite the lofty ambitions of William Monahan’s literate yet arid script, such contrasts do this lumbering movie no favors. If nothing else, at least those other films moved; beyond that, they also featured several morally ambiguous characters (as opposed to the cut-and-dry saints and sinners showcased here), handed juicy roles to vets like Peter O’Toole and Oliver Reed (Kingdom‘s name actors labor mightily in colorless parts), and, in the case of Troy, made a stronger case for contemporary relevance (even today, Christians are still bullying their way into the Middle East, but Kingdom is too timid to make many lacerating observations). The final impression is that a few bad apples were all that prevented the Christians and Muslims from joining hands and participating in sing-alongs – a viewpoint that’s hopelessly naive. As the courageous Balian, Bloom has the heroic glower down pat but brings little else to the role.
MINDHUNTERS For a movie that’s been sitting in Miramax’s storage bin for well over a year, Mindhunters isn’t the train wreck one would have assumed. Like the same studio’s Darkness (which did deserve its dusty designation), this had already played throughout the rest of the world before Miramax finally decided to drop it into the US market for a speedy theatrical run. A high-tech update of Agatha Christie’s classic Ten Little Indians (a.k.a. And Then There Were None), the story finds a band of FBI agents sent to a remote island off the coast of North Carolina, where they’re expected to complete their training by taking part in an exercise that draws upon their skills as profilers of serial killers. But they soon realize that there’s a real killer on the island, and that he or she comes from within their own ranks. Could the murderer be the detective (LL Cool J) who joins the outfit at the last minute? The agent (Kathryn Morris) still troubled by a tragedy in her past? The FBI supervisor (Val Kilmer) who arranged the whole excursion? Or one of the other half-dozen agents stranded on the island? A couple of clues make it relatively easy to deduce the identity of the killer – a plus for those who’d like a shot at solving the mystery, a minus for those who prefer to be kept in the dark until the end. Regardless, the screenplay doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny (each victim has to be in an exact location at an exact time for the villain’s scheme to work), but director Renny Harlin has churned out a fairly engrossing film that doesn’t denigrate the memory of its (uncredited) source material.
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MONSTER-IN-LAW After a 15-year hiatus, Jane Fonda returns to the big screen, and young uns who’ve only heard about her standing as one of the finest actresses of the 1970s will automatically assume that their parents have been pulling their legs all these years. Fonda, whose remarkable performances in Klute and The China Syndrome (among others) still have the power to stun, is an embarrassment in Monster-In-Law, betrayed both by director Robert Luketic’s mishandling and by her own rusty instincts. Fonda apparently accepted the role in the hope that she’d end up in a monster hit a la Barbra Streisand in Meet the Fockers – there’s simply no other logical explanation as for why she would subject herself to such humiliation. Jennifer Lopez, continuing to headline the sort of inane features that Fonda for the most part avoided in her heyday, stars as Charlie, a jill-of-all-trades (caterer, dog walker, receptionist) who finds the perfect man in Dr. Kevin Fields (Alias‘ Michael Vartan). All goes well until Charlie meets his mother Viola, a former TV personality (think Barbara Walters) who hates Charlie because… why exactly? Because Charlie’s young and beautiful? Because she’s a temp? Because she’s a Latino? Because Mom enjoys an Oedipal relationship with her son? The reason’s never clear, but suffice it to say that Viola immediately attempts to railroad the couple’s impending marriage by running Charlie off through all types of juvenile stunts. As Fonda’s wisecracking assistant, Wanda Sykes steals the show with her acerbic wit, and there’s one priceless sequence in which Viola interviews an airhead pop star clearly based on Britney Spears. Otherwise, the laughs are as scarce as Coke machines in the Kalahari.
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Current Releases
THE AMITYVILLE HORROR Jay Anson’s 1977 novel The Amityville Horror was such a worthless piece of literature that the only way it could have moved any copies was for its author and its limelight-soaking subjects to declare it was all based on a true story. That did the trick: The book, about a couple who insisted their house was haunted, became a best-selling phenomenon, though it was soon discredited as pure hokum. A clunky 1979 movie version followed, and now we get the remake, which manages to be even worse than its screen antecedent. Leads Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George try their best, but as a creep show, this slicked-up version is painfully inadequate, preferring to traffic in quick shots of blood-dripping ghouls than establishing any real sense of dread. I’ve seen episodes of Sesame Street that were more frightening than this generic junk.
FEVER PITCH The true subject of this adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel isn’t the love between a man and a woman but between a man and his favorite sports team. As such, the movie’s ability to balance the yin with the yang makes it the ideal date movie, a crowd-pleaser that follows many of the conventions of the modern romantic comedy yet doesn’t betray its convictions for the sake of the usual embarrassing sops to formula. Successful consultant Lindsey Meeks (sparkling Drew Barrymore) is happy with new boyfriend Ben Wrightman (OK Jimmy Fallon) until she notices that his undying devotion to the Boston Red Sox begins interfering with their relationship; he’s reluctant to lose her but can’t commit to her the way he does to his team. Like the character of Ben, Fever Pitch comes across as a scruffy romantic, not always suave on the surface but harboring an irresistible tenderness inside.
HOUSE OF D Maybe not a “D,” but this coming-of-age yarn from writer-director-actor David Duchovny certainly rates no better than a “C.” The former X-Files star here plays Tom Warshaw, an American artist living in Paris who flashes back on a pivotal time during his childhood years in Greenwich Village. Thirteen-year-old Tommy (appealing Anton Yelchin) hangs around with a mentally challenged janitor who gets erect watching horror flicks and who’s prone to telling teenage girls that he’s got a big penis – as if this isn’t frightening enough, also consider that the character is played by Robin Williams in full cuddly-creepy mode. Certainly, there’s much in House of D that’s ghastly – and clearly the work of an actor still cutting his teeth on the other side of the camera – yet there are also plenty of small moments of sensitivity and insight to temporarily offset the amateurishness.
THE INTERPRETER An interpreter (Nicole Kidman) working at the United Nations overhears a plot to assassinate the tyrannical president of her African homeland, but the Secret Service agent (Sean Penn) assigned to the case thinks she’s hiding more than she’s revealing. As a thriller, The Interpreter never matches the sweaty-palms intensity of director Sydney Pollack’s excellent Three Days of the Condor, though it largely gets the job done. But between the soft-hearted assessment of the UN, the creation of a fictional African nation to propel the narrative (why not employ an actual African country that’s had to deal in modern times with ethnic cleansing?), and an ending that takes the easy way out, it’s clear that the Sydney Pollack behind The Interpreter isn’t the same Sydney Pollack behind Three Days of the Condor. Just because a man mellows with age doesn’t mean his movies should.
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KUNG FU HUSTLE Operating with the same degree of logic as a Marx Brothers feature or a Looney Tunes short – which is to say, operating with no logic at all – Kung Fu Hustle stands alone as the year’s most whacked out bit of entertainment. Writer-director Stephen Chow also plays the nominal lead, an ineffectual con man of the streets who inadvertently sets off a feud between the ruthless members of the ruling Axe Gang and the resilient residents of a slum area known as Pig Sty Alley. A nonstop orgy of madcap martial arts mayhem, this violent live-action cartoon contains a handful of brilliant moments, but it also spreads its concept thin: With nothing of real substance propelling the shenanigans, the movie grows redundant during the second half before regaining its footing for the climax.
A LOT LIKE LOVE A Lot Like Love is a lot like When Harry Met Sally crossed with Serendipity, as two people wonder whether they’re better off remaining friends or whether the stars have something more intimate in mind for them. Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet play the part-time lovers, two strangers (they “meet cute” by wordlessly boffing in an airplane lavatory) who continually run into each other over the ensuing years. But rather than commit to each other and in effect get us out of the theater after a blessedly short half-hour, the pair keep bumping up against labored plot developments that drive them apart and insure at least one more trip to the concession stand. The stars are likable, but Colin Patrick Lynch’s script never wholly convinces us that these two necessarily need to be together.
SAHARA This may be based on Clive Cussler’s bestseller, but it feels like a knock-off of Raiders of the Lost Ark, a send-up of the James Bond oeuvre or an instant sequel to National Treasure. Matthew McConaughney plays explorer Dirk Pitt as if he were a party-hardy frat boy who ventured out into the real world after all campus kegs were tapped dry; hammy Steve Zahn, as his sidekick, gets the funniest lines but can’t deliver them without squinting like Popeye on the electric chair; and Penelope Cruz tags along as a dedicated doctor, although she seems so disinterested in what’s happening around her that it’s hard to believe her character would even have the medical know-how to prescribe aspirin. For a movie that Paramount hopes will kick off a new screen franchise, there’s an air of desperation about Sahara, which tries too hard to please and in the process strips itself of any natural charm.
OPENS FRIDAY:
KICKING AND SCREAMING: Will Ferrell, Robert Duvall.
MINDHUNTERS: LL Cool J, Val Kilmer.
MONSTER-IN-LAW: Jennifer Lopez, Jane Fonda.
UNLEASHED: Jet Li, Morgan Freeman.
This article appears in May 11-17, 2005.
