reviews

There’s been a lot of excited debate in the last few weeks about whether X-Men is the best comic-book movie ever made. I haven’t decided yet — the first Batman and Superman movies are awfully good, too. But I have no doubt that the best comic-book movie ever made that is not actually based on a comic book is Sam Raimi’s Darkman.

Picture this scenario. You’re 5 years old, sweet and innocent but a little confused by your parents’ recent divorce. One night, you’re out to dinner with your mom and her new boyfriend (‘Why is Mommy kissing a man who’s not Daddy?’ you might worry in some secret corner of your impressionable little mind), along with your siblings and your charming, wonderful, delightful English housekeeper, the lady who reads your favorite book, Stuart Little, to you, and does all the voices, just like Daddy used to before he had to move away. And then, without warning, the housekeeper’s wig falls off… and she’s Daddy!

If you think fat people are inherently funny, you’ll love The Klumps. If you haven’t gotten over your adolescent embarrassment about human sexuality, you’ll love The Klumps. If you think explosive flatulence and projectile shitting is funny, you’ll love The Klumps. But if you think that anyone older than 6 who still laughs at fart jokes should be ashamed, the three of you out there will want to steer clear.

Lewis’s Nutty Professor mostly just bored me, but the 1996 update actively annoyed me. Geeks are cool now, so Professor Sherman Klump (Eddie Murphy: bowfing, mulan) isn’t a dorky scientist — he’s a fat scientist. It’s still acceptable to make fun of fat people, and hack director Tom Shadyac (patch) will do so with gleeful abandon. And he’ll throw in lots and lots of fart jokes, too. Boy o boy, farts sure are funny, ain’t they?

If there’s a lit candle onscreen in What Lies Beneath, you can bet you’re gonna see its flame extinguish… all by itself! If someone walks backward down a flight of stairs, you can bet that someone is gonna bump into something nasty. If someone’s on the left edge of the frame looking toward the right, you can bet Zemeckis is gonna pan left to reveal a boogeyman approaching from behind. Every single moment meant to be frightening is telegraphed from ten miles out, leaving you plenty of time to relax and try to pick out all the psychological thrillers that were ransacked to produce this incessantly dull film: Ah, there’s Rear Window! And here’s Psycho! Oh, it’s The Sixth Sense!

A doctor, losing his hearing, who eavesdrops on his neighbors while he still can. A masseuse who longs to be on the receiving end of the touch of another human being. A cake decorator whose beautiful creations look great but don’t taste very good. A professional house cleaner who makes dates to smell his old … more…

All the Bible-thumpers who think the cures for America’s woes lie in posting the Ten Commandments everywhere would do well to remember this: Those same decrees were on display in the Nuremberg courtroom in which Nazi law was handed down, laws responsible for the persecution of entire races of people and, ultimately, for the deaths of tens of millions. If those commandments had any effect on those they looked down on, it certainly cannot have been for the better.

If 1960’s Village of the Damned didn’t have a direct influence on the creation of Doctor Who, which debuted on TV only a few years later, I’ll eat my Powerbook.

Boy, is this the summer of angst-ridden Australian tough guys, or what? First there was Russell Crowe as a vengeance-powered gladiator, then there was Mel Gibson as a vengeance-powered revolutionary. And now we have Hugh Jackman as a vengeance-powered mutant in X-Men… though a lot of the revenge is being stored for the inevitable — and, I’ll confess, immediately highly anticipated — sequel.