Although based on the classic 1947 crime thriller of the same title, this grim and unfocused but strikingly atmospheric and absorbing bloody-nose fest shares only that title and its basic premise with the original.
More's the pity. The '47 version, for one thing, was directed by a master of subtlety, Henry Hathaway, while this one is directed by the pretentious, look-Mama-I'm-directing Barbet Schroeder (Reversal of Fortune). The original stars, Victor Mature as a crook turned informant, and Richard Widmark as a cackling, sadistic gunman, have been supplanted by the insubstantial Caruso and professional overactor Cage.
The new film was also written by tough guy wannabe Richard Price, whose idea of flaunting his street smarts is including at least one four-letter word in every sentence of dialogue.
The real star of this movie is production designer Mel Bourne, who creates a darkly convincing, seamy New York City crime subculture in a car-theft ring that operates out of a Queens garage and a topless bar run by the same crook, Cage's emphysemic father.
Jackson, as a cop with an unreasoning grudge against Caruso, Hunt, as Caruso's resourceful wife, and the underused Michael Rapaport, as Caruso's manipulative cousin, do the most affecting acting. Price's plot careens to a convoluted ending that takes a while to sort out—and isn't too satisfying even then. (R)
Pauly Shore, Tia Carrere, Stanley Tucci, Abe Vigoda
To look on the all-too-dim bright side of this insipid courtroom comedy: It is only 86 minutes long. The charmless Shore, on the other hand, is still the star. And TriStar Pictures' promotion campaign, which suggests Jury Duty is a satire of the O.J. Simpson trial, is deceitful.
Most of the movie is devoted to Shore's dork shtick as he lands on the jury for the trial of a serial killer who has murdered seven fast-food workers. Shore has a kind of partner in a little bald Chihuahua that shows an unnatural interest in watching Jeopardy!, but he lacks a real foil. The film's real shock comes from the writers, who two-thirds of the way through turn from clueless comedy to clueless drama. (PG-13)
Martin Lawrence, Will Smith, Tea Leoni, Theresa Randle
Let's say this buddy action comedy begins with 100 points of entertainment value. If we subtract, say, 10 points for each line of dialogue that consists entirely of "Oh, expletive!" and 25 points for each car chase or gratuitous explosion, that would leave Bad Boys with about minus-250 points of entertainment value.
Screenwriters Michael Barrie, Jim Mulholland and Doug Richardson essentially drop out after contributing one amusing idea: the premise, involving a married Miami cop (Lawrence) harboring a sexy witness (Leoni) who has seen a drug-related murder. When Lawrence stashes Leoni in his partner Smith's bachelor pad, it sets up some clever mistaken-identity gags and lets Randle, as Lawrence's wife, wax indignant over his familiarity with Leoni.
The unfailingly ingratiating Smith glides through the movie. Where Lawrence is a standup trying to be an actor, Smith is an actor with a refined sense of comedy. He is also physically imposing enough to pull off a serious action film. (R)
Animated
After 63 years of supporting roles and shorts, Goofy, Disney's flap-eared canine cutup, finally gets a full-length feature of his own. Sadly, one cannot say that a star is born.
In A Goofy Movie, Goofy is worried about his son Max, and not just because the teenager is developing Dad's overbite. No, Goofy, a single dad (it's never explained whether Mrs. Goofy has departed due to death or divorce, though Goofy's curiously epicene, doofus personality leads one to suspect the latter), fears that Max has fallen in with a bad crowd. Goofy takes the lad on a fishing trip, hoping to bond over trout. Max has other ideas, boasting to his would-be girlfriend that he and his dad are headed for Los Angeles to join Powerline, a rock star, onstage during a televised concert.
Well, you get the idea. A Goofy Movie is a minor effort aimed squarely at the 5-to 11-year-old set. (G)
Documentary
Best known (to his professed disgust) as the creator of Fritz the Cat, underground-comics artist Robert Crumb is an important figure in the American counterculture. But, as this affectionate, unsettling documentary makes clear, he has burrowed down deep into a verminous layer all his own. You wouldn't want to go in there without a flashlight.
Unlike Quentin Tarantino, Crumb doesn't like the pop trash around him. Despite his association with the '60s. he hates the Grateful Dead and psychedelic rock, preferring ragtime, jazz and blues from the '20s. A spindly character with thick glasses and a small mustache, Crumb, 51, seems to be doing his best to loosen up and explain his hideous yet beautifully drafted art, with its mammoth women, clammy, strung-out men and perverse sexual acts. As a child, he tells us, he found cartoon characters (particular Bugs Bunny) arousing. Schwing! And, growing up in Philadelphia with an abusive father and amphetamine-addicted mother, he and his two talented brothers, Charles and Max, spent hours drawing strange comic-book adaptations of the 1950 Disney movie Treasure Island. Charles eventually slipped into depression and obsessive doodling, what Crumb describes as "graphomania." His interviews here are very painful to sit through. He killed himself in 1992, the year after filming was completed.
The movie, directed by Crumb's longtime friend Terry Zwigoff, is thorough and frank. One ex-lover, Dian Hanson, now a porn publisher, says that Crumb is turned on by piggyback rides—and in Crumb he does appear to relish every opportunity to be carried around by a woman. But there's no explaining Crumb. At times he seems merely to be playing himself, a celebrity crank. And then he can be absolutely inscrutable. When Charles recalls how he tried to wean himself from antidepressants, only to feel suicidal, Crumb slaps his knee and rocks with laughter, as if he hadn't heard that chestnut in a long time. (R)
- Contributors:
- Ralph Novak,
- Leah Rozen,
- Tom Gliatto.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
