Now must we offer sacrifices of thanks to the god of cartoons, for this has been a most bountiful year. (Someone bring the fruit plate and the flowers to the shrine.) First there was Disney's Pocahontas, a lush, softly romantic classic of the traditional school of animation. Now, working with a high-tech graphics company called Pixar, Disney has produced the first feature-length computer-animated film, and it too is a movie of the first rank—a polished, shiny wonder to behold. And, thanks to a clever script, it's lots of fun too. I can't recall a dull spot in its 81 minutes.
Story is about the rivalry between a toy cowboy, Woody (Hanks), and the birthday gift that instantly becomes his young owner's new favorite, a plastic spaceman named Buzz Lightyear (Allen). Buzz has short, powerful arms, the dully contented look of beef cattle unaware of the butcher and small red pulsating lights—lasers—on his gloves. Woody, on the other hand, looks like...it's hard to remember what Woody looks like once Buzz shows up. Even the other toys in the bedroom are obsessed with him. Hence, Woody's determination to get rid of Buzz.
Computer animation, it turns out, is ideal for depicting the surface sheen of plastic toys, everything from little, pear-shaped space aliens (they're rubbery) to miniature Marines (waxy). Only the human characters are a bit odd—spongy instead of fleshy. And for some reason a dog comes out looking like a carpeted killer whale. Big deal.(G)
Jack Nicholson, David Morse, Anjelica Huston, Robin Wright
In his second outing as a screenwriter and director (the first was 1991's The Indian Runner), Sean Penn has made a maddeningly uneven film. It's maddening in the same way that John Cassavetes' films used to be: parts are so good, while others, self-indulgent actorly scenes that drag on too long (and the directorial equivalent, moody shots of bridges at sunrise), are as flaccid as wilted celery.
Here, Nicholson, in a wrenchingly dark performance, plays a man obsessed with killing the drunk driver (Morse) who mowed down his young daughter. In the years since her death, Nicholson has become a dissolute wreck, spending more time nuzzling strippers and Jack Daniels bottles than running his jewelry store. When Morse, still racked with guilt but hoping to get on with his life, is sprung after five years in jail, Nicholson sets out to shoot him. "That is my job in life," he tells his ex-wife (Huston, mesmerizing as always, but underused).
The main plotline—will he kill him or won't he?—is the stuff of melodrama, but it is during the movie's side trips that Penn scores most of his points. Take the rendezvous between Nicholson, emotionally disintegrating, and Huston in the late-night, fluorescent glare of a coffee shop. "I've been so goddamned angry at you for so long that I couldn't hear you," she says (our knowledge that these two were once a couple in real life adds, of course, to the scene's poignancy).
The Crossing Guard doesn't always work but, as Willie Loman's wife said of her late husband—a character whom Nicholson echoes in an even more desperate, '90s kind of way—attention must be paid. (R)
Jim Carrey, Sophie Okonedo, Simon Callow, Ian McNeice, Tommy Davidson
Making a sequel to Ace Ventura: Pet Detective was like putting a fur coat on a squirrel. Loud, frantic, timid and infantile, When Nature Calls depends, of course, on the supposed appeal of Carrey, who remains two Stooges shy of a load—slow, clumsy and as subtle as an eye gouge.
After the film's only amusing sequence, an opening that parodies the beginning of Sylvester Stallone's Cliff hanger, Carrey, again playing the animal-friendly detective, takes refuge in a Tibetan monastery until he is summoned to Africa by British diplomat Callow to find a missing sacred bat.
Carrey blurts or blares every line and overplays every expression and gesture. From his Chocolate-Dream-Whip-Run-Amok hairdo to his swaggering John Wayne-Mae West walk, he insists on laughing so heartily at his own antics that it's hard for an audience to find a place to slip in a chuckle.
Not that writer-director Steve Oedekerk is any model of sophistication. He dwells on scenes involving people spitting in each other's faces, masturbation and even regurgitating food into a baby bird's mouth.
The supporting cast is lame, except for the gorgeous young Okonedo as a princess whose tribe worships the bat and In Living Color's Davidson as a fiendishly energetic warrior.
Other than the masturbation sequence and one in which Okonedo's breasts are referred to as her "rack," there is nothing too offensive in this movie. Its existence and commercial success, however, are hardly a glowing tribute to the health of the popular culture. (PG-13)
>Steve Oedekerk
CALL FROM THE WILD
writer Steve Oedekerk had never directed before taking the helm of Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. Still, the Ace writer and star Jim Carrey went way back: They had met in 1985 doing stand-up comedy in L.A., worked together on Fox TV's In Living Color and conceived the idea for the original Ace. So when Carrey fell out with director Tom DeCerchio three weeks into the Nature shoot, he turned to Oedekerk, who was already on the San Antonio set. "I expected to stay five days," recalls Oedekerk, 35. "I arrived back at my doorstep 4½ months later. It was Gilligan's Island—a 3-hour tour gone crazy."
What was Jim like when you first met?
Jim was fearless. He went onstage and did whatever occurred to him. When it worked, it was incredible. But when he bombed, he bombed to a degree never before seen. If Jim was going to bomb, he wanted it to be bigger than anyone. That's ambition.
How about sharing an office with him at In Living Color in 1992?
Complete insanity. We worked 18-hour days on the show and then stayed there till 4 a.m. working on ideas for Ace. Around 2 a.m. we would take breaks and photocopy our entire bodies.
How was it directing him?
He goes so nuts that everything can't stay. In editing I had to lose funny stuff, like a gorilla dragging him into the bushes. But Jim and I have an open dialogue. We're both relentless. We work until it's so silly it's impossible to get work done—then we go another hour.
- Contributors:
- Tom Gliatto,
- Leah Rozen,
- Ralph Novak,
- Todd Gold.
