Reykjavík Grapevine - 27.06.2003, Síða 14

- the reykjavík grapevine -14 june 27th - july 10th, 2003 - the reykjavík grapevine - 15june 27th - july 10th, 2003

However, the film soon snaps out of
this, and we seem to enter familiar
horror film territory. It’s all here, a rain
soaked motel, a serial killer on the loose,
an Indian graveyard, a spooky kid and,
of course, the obligatory whiners with
gruesome deaths written all over them.
But then the twists just keep on coming,
yet this is neither Pet Cemetery meets
Psycho, nor The Sixth Sense meets Pulp
Fiction. It’s more like a combination of
the four.
Ray Liotta seems, like his other co-
stars from Goodfellas, to have boycotted
good films since then, so it’s refreshing to
see him in something that isn’t absolutely
dreadful. Rebecca De Mornay doesn’t
survive long, but Amanda Peet, after this
and the excellent Changing Lanes, might
turn out to be something more than just
another pretty blonde. John Cusack is
one of the most dependable actors of
the last decade, and this might not be
one of his highlights, but neither is it a
disappointment. And director James
Mangold makes the film he probably
should have made right after Copland.
Five minutes before the ending, I
found myself really liking the film. The
biggest plot twist of all turns out to be
the idea that the clinically insane should
not be executed, which is a somewhat
revolutionary idea in a Hollywood film.
But then we get one plot twist too many,
and of course said insane person, on his
way to the hospital, starts killing people,
giving you once more the tried and
tested moral that the criminally insane
should be killed off right away, preferably
without trial, since any attempt to give
them a second hearing will undoubtedly
lead to slaughter. Disappointing, then, at
the very end, but until then, considerably
better than your average fare.
VALU
R
GU
N
N
ARSSON
BY
You can never be quite sure where you are with this
film. It starts off with the Tarantinoesque shtick of
seeing different stories with different characters
who are all connected in some way, which seemed
innovative ten years ago (at least for those who
had never seen Kubrick´s The Killing), but has now
become so overused that the impression created
resembles hearing Stairway to Heaven in a guitar
store.
M O V I E S
There’s a memorable scene from Mel
Brooks The Producers that has Max
Bialystock, a penniless Broadway
producer, desperately searching for
the worst play ever written. After days
on the chaise lounge reading appalling
plays, his eyes drop to a script entitled
Springtime for Hitler – A Gay Romp
With Eva and Adolph at Bertsgaden
and he realises that he has finally
found what he was looking for. “A solid
gold, guaranteed to close in one night,
beauty.”
Now, it seems, in Dumb and Dumb-
erer, I have at last found the cinematic
equivalent of Springtime for Hitler, a
towering monument to crassness and
ineptitude but without the laughs. Let’s
face it; the prospects for this prequel,
shorn, as it is, of those few elements
that made the original watchable, were
never very good. And as it turns out
D&D is one of those films that should
never have made it past the pitch-
board. In a ideal and sane world,
when the original leads make it clear
they would rather commit harakiri than
get involved in such an ill conceived
project, it would be quietly shelved or
significantly redeveloped. Alas, this be-
ing Hollywood the obvious next step is
to spend large sums of money finding
suitable look-alikes. Judging from the
surprising amount of myopic or stoned
people who stumbled into the cinema
under the misapprehension that Carrey
was actually involved, it was probably
money well spent. (Don’t people read
the posters anymore?). I can’t imagine
any grown adult with a fully developed
frontal lobe entering under any other
circumstances.
And so to the film itself, the gory
details of which I have been busily
avoiding.
Well, Derek Richardson and someone
called Eric Christian Olsen take us
back to the high school days of our
doltish duo where they first met and
bonded into best buddies. Obviously
inserted as an afterthought when some
bookish scriptwriter suggested it might
a help to have one, the plot sees the
duo unwittingly expose their corrupt
headmaster, who is busy embezzling
school funds. To achieve this worthy
end our have-a-go heroes subject the
audience to excruciating 89 minutes
of low intensity torture. With truly
appalling acting, a sub-literate script
and a willingness to stoop to unheard
of depths in search of cheap laughs,
D&D makes American Pie look like the
Battleship Potemkin. A running gag
where chocolate is mistaken for shit
is an accurate indicator of the IQ on
display.
For two very good reasons, I will
resist the temptation to conclude, as
others have done, by dismissing this
film as merely mind-numbing muck
to amuse bored teenagers. Firstly,
as D&D plunges to depths where
excrement is an accolade, it would
be an insult to the fine mind-numbing
muck of Hollywood. Secondly, I would
suggest to parents that, to achieve the
same affect as D&D, simply beat your
teenager mercilessly about the head
and save yourself a few thousand kr.
on cinema tickets in the process.
John Boyce
IDENTITY
review
DUMB AND DUMBERER