Mickey Mouse is reading beyond his comprehension level. The Disney animators, for the studio's 34th full-length cartoon, have picked up—oof! steady, guys, it's heavy!—Victor Hugo's 1831 novel, an overabundantly plotted melodrama set in 15th-century Paris. Quasimodo (Hulce), a deformed bell ringer, falls in love with Esmeralda (Moore), a gypsy dancer. She in turn is loved by a noble captain, Phoebus (Kline), and lusted after by Judge Frollo, the self-righteous hypocrite who locked up baby Quasi in the cathedral in the first place. The Disney trademarks—lavish animation, inanimate objects (gargoyles) transformed into vaudeville sidekicks, busy musical numbers—have been slopped between the grim, granite story blocks like weak mortar. The film succeeds in wringing tears, but, not surprisingly given its construction, seems constantly on the verge of collapse.
This Quasimodo, a sweet, simple realization, has large, expressive eyes and boyish energy. He looks like Nathan Lane crushed by a vise. Frollo, on the other hand, is richly complex and perverse. (He sniffs Esmeralda's hair with a fetishistic hunger.) But who wants dark, psychological realism in a Disney cartoon? The cathedral, with its rose windows and big bells, is a marvel and will make an excellent attraction at the theme parks. (For a look at earlier versions of Hunchback, see next page.) (G)
Jim Carrey, Matthew Broderick
Timid, lame and painfully constricted by its need to pander to Carrey's subtlety-impaired style, this insipid comedy has all the zip of a trip down a playground slide lined with tar and broken glass.
Carrey is a cable TV installer who does freelance stalking on the side. After he hooks up Broderick's TV, he begins plaguing him with phone calls, gifts and visits. Carrey, submerging his usual mush-mouth diction under a crude lisp, overdoes everything, while Broderick, much the superior actor, displays relative restraint.
In tailoring the script to Carrey's comedic limitations, writer Lou Holtz Jr. is reduced—as when Carrey urges Broderick to make a play for a woman—to giving him such lines as, "He who hesitates, masturbates." And, as directed by Ben Stiller, Cable Guy waffles between slapstick humor and a crypto-poignancy that points the film toward its way-too-dark ending. It is almost as if, in the closing minutes of a Three Stooges romp, one of the boys actually puts another's eye out. (PG-13)
Billy Zane, Kristy Swanson
Across between the spoofy fun of Raiders of the Lost Ark and the more idolatrous Batman, this colorful, snappily paced adventure yarn is adapted from Lee Falk's 60-year-old comic strip about a self-consciously mysterious superhero who wears purple leotards and fights evil with his wits, a pistol and a pet wolf, Devil. Here, the Phantom (Zane) vies with Treat Williams's bad guy to find skulls that generate a mysterious power.
While writer Jeffrey Boam (Raiders of the Lost Ark) doesn't show much sense of humor, he does stay true to Falk's concept, setting the story in 1938 and using only low-tech gadgetry. The athletic and well-conditioned Zane makes an intrepid action hero, while love interest Swanson, as inexpressive as she is pretty, recalls Jean Rogers, the memorably vapid heroine of Buster Crabbe's '30s Flash Gordon serials. Williams's high-pitched voice and theatrical gesturing make him less than menacing. (PG)
Liv Tyler, Jeremy Irons
Stealing Beauty is a summer salad, appetizing enough and vibrantly colored, but not terribly filling. This is a small, simple tale about a 19-year-old American (Tyler) who summers in Tuscany with some bohemians, pals of her late mother. She has two goals: to discover the identity of a mystery lover mentioned in her mom's journal and to lose her virginity. Hey, why else go to Europe?
Her youth, beauty and innocence stir the jaded Europeans. Each reacts differently. One puts the make on her, while another (Irons), though dying, is emotionally rejuvenated by his proximity to her. And that's about it. Director Bernardo Bertolucci may think this is all about love and mortality, but mostly it's about coming of age in a scenic setting. Tyler is the standout here. She has the gawky charm of a foal unsure of its ability to stand—and a hopeful sweetness. (R)
>The Hunchback of Notre Dame
MONDO QUASIMODO
IN ONE OF THE BIG SCENES IN VICTOR Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris, an angry mob storms the cathedral, and Quasimodo, the unhappy hero of the title, pours molten lead down on their heads. Why would Disney want to make such goings-on the subject of its latest cartoon feature, opening this Friday (June 21)? Because of the success of Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991), suggests John Stanley, author of Creature Features Strikes Again, an encyclopedia of horror movies. Like Beauty, Stanley points out, "Hunchback is a love story about an ugly creature who loves a beautiful woman, and how her attitude changes." Toss in Pinocchio. According to Tab Murphy, head writer of this Hunchback, "Here was a hero, albeit a tragic one, who could overcome his handicaps." At the least, to judge from the molten-lead incident, he's empowered.
It's not as if Disney is the first to try to score with Hunchback. There have been at least seven earlier film adaptations of the Hugo classic, including the 1917 silent The Darling of Paris, starring that primal vamp Theda Bara as Esmeralda in a beefed up role.
Of the actors who've stooped to play Quasimodo, two stand out (but could barely stand up). In 1923, Lon Chaney saddled himself with a 72-pound rubber hump. For the 1939 version with Maureen O'Hara, Charles Laughton reported to the set every day at 4 a.m. to start applying his makeup, and was strapped into an aluminum-scaffold hump. To make sure his face showed anguish for one scene, he told an assistant to twist his foot—hard.
After Laughton (the best, says Stanley) came a limp 1957 version with Anthony Quinn and Gina Lollo-brigida, followed by two TV films, one for the BBC in 1976 with Warren Clark and Michelle Newell, the other for CBS in 1982 with Anthony Hopkins and Lesley-Anne Down. Ever see Big Man on Campus? That 1989 comedy reimagined Quasimodo at UCLA.
- Contributors:
- Tom Gliatto,
- Ralph Novak,
- Leah Rozen,
- Lynda Wright,
- Michele Keller.
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!
