Hey folks, Harry here, saw this film last night, enjoyed the hell out of it, though I went expecting it to be a floating log of Baby Ruth con corny. There may not be an original bone in the movie, but gosh it's fun to see how it's all pieced together. I'll be writing the review... later (I promise), but time just isn't letting me, what with the SLC PUNK review I wrote tonight. Well, I agree almost all the way across the board with our spy here, except with Jessica Alba, who for me more than did her job as EYE CANDY. The pure caloric heat flash you get from her is enough to cause damage to your keyboard. Vivica Fox was HORRIBLE though... so I agree! Here's The Graduate's look....
I managed to score tickets to a sneak preview screening of IDLE HANDS in downtown Boston tonight. This movie is coming out Friday, so the version I saw was the final cut, complete with the trailer for BIG DADDY attached.
Think of this movie as BILL AND TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE meets THE EXORCIST. Even better, think of it as the anti-SCREAM. Whereas SCREAM was a horror flick with occasional flashes of wry, self-referential wit, IDLE HANDS is pure comedy with the occasional scare thrown in. Devon Sawa plays Anton Tobias, a stoner who’s so out of it he doesn’t really notice when his parents go missing. He’s brought crashing back to reality, however, when he finds their corpses in the living room, his name scrawled in their blood, and his right hand suddenly intent on mangling his best friends, not to mention his hot new girlfriend.
Pros: The men. Devon Sawa, as Anton, does some terrific physical acting to totally convince the audience that his hand is possessed. In this age when we expect all our fantastic special effects to be spoon-fed to us by computers (and this film does have its share of those), he manages to take a physical gag to a new level. Seth Green and Eldon Henson are a riot as Anton’s stoner friends, two dudes who are so lazy that they come back as undead because they can’t be bothered to walk down that "long, bright corridor" to heaven.
Cons: The women. Jessica Alba, as Molly, the main romantic interest, gives a performance that makes Keanu Reeves look like Sir Laurence Olivier. Her delivery is stilted and her motivation utterly unclear. Granted, she isn’t given much help from the script: it’s never entirely plain why she likes Devon, the loser from next door, so she’s reduced to role of sex object and scream queen. Vivica A. Fox gives a lackluster performance as Debi Lecure, a role which (in my opinion) should have been eliminated from the movie entirely. Her character is supposedly a demon hunter from an ancient line, but the fun in this flick is watching a bunch of potheads try to destroy out a supernatural evil. Her character just doesn’t jibe with the movie’s concept.
With so many misleading and/or spoiler-filled trailers out today, it’s nice to see the marketing team finally get one right. If you saw the trailer and hated it, don’t bother going. If, on the other hand, you laughed at the ludicrousness of the concept, this film is for you. The filmmakers never forget that their movie is a comedy based on an incredibly silly premise, so many of the major plot twists (and the climax) are equally goofy. There are a few nice scares (on the level of "something pops out just when you thought you were safe") and creative means of execution, but the movie wisely steers away from delving too deep into the horror genre. Instead, the jokes come pretty consistently, even if they’re not the most sophisticated ones.
Final tally: Two and a half stars (out of four), and a special "Balls to the Wall" award to Sony for making and marketing this baby.
