Almost every movie Jack Nicholson appears in represents, for him, a night to howl. But he gels to snarl, stalk, pounce, eviscerate and chew in this original, upscale werewolf movie, which is 5 percent scary but 95 percent entertaining.
With his normal feral intensity and lupine features, Nicholson always looks like the animated Disney Big Bad Wolf of the '30s. And he transforms into a werewolf with only minimal help from special effects wizard Rick Baker, recalling Spencer Tracy's unaided Jekyll-to-Hyde metamorphosis in 1941's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Nicholson plays a Manhattan book editor who hits a wolf while driving in Vermont and is bitten by the animal while trying to help it. On returning to New York City, he has a mostly bad week—turning into a murderous werewolf whenever the moon is full; losing his job in a takeover by rapacious business tycoon Plummer; and realizing his wife of 16 years, Nelligan, is having an affair with his professional rival, Spader, a ruthless marketing whiz. But he also meets the unattached Pfeiffer, Plummer's daughter.
Director Mike Nichols and writers Jim Harrison and Wesley Strick stop short of having Nicholson and Pfeiffer lope off into the sunset, paw in paw. But when they're not taking the werewolf business straight, they try to concoct a romantic comedy out of a horror scenario—wolf bites girl, wolf loses girl, wolf gets girl. The humor is restricted mostly to stray wisecracks aimed at gratuitous, if tempting, targets—Oprah Winfrey, Judith Krantz, the Time Warner megaglomerate and the Hair Club for Men.
The film slows painfully whenever Nichols strains to make implicit comparisons between Nicholson's rip-throat werewolf behavior and the cutthroat modern business world. The movie buys into the standard werewolf mythology in most respects—an individual wolf is not very dangerous, wolves being pack-hunting animals—but Nicholson-as-wolf is a terror, able at times to leap 20 feet in the air from a standing start (though he's noticeably unable to do so at others, when he is trapped behind low fences) and evincing a supernatural strength. On the other hand, they ignore the old rule that says werewolves can be killed only with silver objects.
George Waggner's moody, thoughtful 1941 horror classic The Wolf Man remains the best werewolf movie. This film is less well cast and surprisingly less sexy, but it's more colorful (mostly more bloody), brighter, more playful and faster, with an appealingly twisty ending. Chacun à son loup-garou. (R)
Macaulay Culkin, Ted Danson
At a Saturday morning screening of this mawkish father-son comedy, an escaped toddler kept trotting up and down the aisle, squealing with delight at his fledgling navigational abilities. He was having the most fun of anyone there.
Culkin plays a precocious 11-year-old here who outfoxes his ex-con father (Danson) and, in the process, teaches the old man about the joys of parenting. He does this by hiding the rare coins Dad has just stolen. His ransom demand? That Pop spend five days taking him to baseball games, skating rinks, amusement parks, etc. Will father and son bond via these activities? Does the candy counter have Junior Mints?
Getting Even is Home Alone grafted onto a father-son reunion theme. This makes it both tediously derivative (complete with two comic bad guys, played broadly by Saul Rubinek and Gailard Sartain) and excessively saccharine.
Danson has the most fun with his charming tough guy character. His is a loosey-goosey performance—maybe it's the ponytail he gets to wear. Culkin, edging perilously close to adolescence, overdoes the poor, poor pitiful me act. As a lady cop wise to Danson but unwisely falling for him, the baby-voiced Glenne Headly has a couple of amusing scenes. (PG)
Rusty Cundieff, Mark Christopher Lawrence, Larry B. Scott
A mockumentary about a gangsta' rap group, Fear of a Black Hat owes a big tip of its chapeau noir to 1984's This Is Spinal Tap, which focused on a fictitious heavy metal band. That said, a tip of the hat to director-writer-star Cundieff for making a film that has both wit and bite.
Fear follows the fortunes of N.W.H. (Niggaz with Hats), a band whose members are named DJ Tone Def, Ice Cold and Tasty-Taste. In tagging along with the rappers, the movie touches on such topics as political posturing (N.W.H.'s name derives from the group's theory that field slaves were too tired to rebel because they had no hats to protect them from the scorching sun. "So, what we're saying is, 'Yo, we got hats now," explains one band member). It also, in its way, addresses the issue of violence (all five of the band's managers have been killed by gunfire) and pokes fun at uncool white record executives ("You guys are so fresh chill," one tells the band).
The targets may be expected, but Cundieff has still managed to work some amusing variations, particularly in his parodies of music videos. At a zippy 83 minutes, the movie is over well before he runs out of material. (R)
- Contributors:
- Ralph Novak,
- Leah Rozen.
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