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Home Movies
June 20, 1997
Web posted at: 10:45 p.m. EDT (0245 GMT)By Scott Hettrick
FIERCE CREATURES (Universal, priced for rental, rated PG-13) 1997. Directed by Robert Young and Fred Schepisi; starring John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin, Carey Lowell and Robert Lindsay.
Producers and marketers would have you believe that "Fierce Creatures" is a sequel of sorts to the hilarious and successful "A Fish Called Wanda" (1988). Don't be misled.
(5 MB/2min. 18sec. QuickTime movie)
Not only does this movie have nothing to do with the other, except that it stars the same four primary actors, but it also has none of "Fish's" distinct cleverness.
Nor, alas, does it contain the brilliant off-the-wall humor of the Monty Python movies, despite being produced,
co-written (and unofficially co-directed) by John Cleese and starring Cleese and Pythoner Michael Palin.Now that you know what it isn't, we can get down to the task of explaining what it is.
"Fierce Creatures" is a moderately amusing stab at the pervasiveness of corporate advertising and the impact of business tycoons seeking 20 percent earnings. It even promotes animal care.
Using that very Lucille Ball and English humor that draws on the chaos that grows out of a series of misunderstandings, Cleese plays the new director of a British zoo recently purchased by tycoon Rod McCain (Kevin Kline).
Nothing new here
To build profits, the softhearted zoo keeper, who pretends to be insensitive, proposes getting rid of all the warm, fuzzy animals in favor of violent creatures, because they draw the biggest crowds.
Eager new American marketing executive Willa Weston (Jamie Lee Curtis) talks her way into the job of overseer on the project.
Following her like a dog in heat is the ne'er-do-well son of the tycoon, Vince McCain, a double role played completely over the top by Kline, an acting style that is becoming disturbingly common for him of late. (Not that Curtis is branching out from her familiar role of the vixen who exposes equal amounts of leg and cleavage.)
Palin, who took a lot of heat for his stuttering character in "Fish," is almost completely wasted here as a concerned zoo worker.
Were the enormously gifted Cleese, Palin and Kline not involved, one would consider this to be a reasonably enjoyable, but not memorable, comedy. But with those three participants, it can be considered nothing less than a disappointment.
THE CRUCIBLE (Fox, priced for rental, rated PG-13) 1996. Directed by Nicholas Hytner; starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder, Paul Scofield, Joan Allen, Bruce Davison and Jeffrey Jones.
The Salem witch trials.
Mass hysteria.
A woman spurned.
That about sums up this latest adaptation of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible."
The project is an earnestly mounted production, and the actors play it well.
But it's hard to get wrapped up in a story about people who are such religious zealots that they will believe anything that sounds God-fearing, and zealots who would hang their neighbors and betray their families.
This "Crucible" works better as a companion to the study of the original in high school English class than it does as contemporary entertainment.
In this case, the story is predicated on the word of one influential young woman named Abigail (Winona Ryder), who is so consumed with passion for the married John Proctor (Daniel Day-Lewis), with whom she had an affair (that he came to regret), that she tells the town leaders that Proctor's wife is a witch.
This sets off a frenzy of accusations that ultimately results in the hangings of numerous town residents following several kangaroo court proceedings.
Paul Scofield is convincing as the closed-minded judge on a mission to wipe out any sign of the devil, real or imagined. Joan Allen gives a strong performance as Proctor's scorned wife; the character is initially one-dimensional and despised but, by the closing scene, sympathetic.
VID TIP: The most expensive made-for-video production, "Casper, a Spirited Beginning," hopes to scare up some business at video stores September 9.
The $10 million live-action prequel to the live-action theatrical "Casper" stars Steve Guttenberg, Rodney Dangerfield and Michael McKean -- the trio of ghosts from the original -- and two new ghosts, voiced by James Earl Jones and Pauley Shore.
The story picks up shortly after Casper became a ghost and learned to use his new powers. Another "Caspar," which introduces the friendly ghost's friend Wendy, the Good Little Witch, is being prepared for release next year.
LASER TIP: "Trainspotting" is not so much an acquired taste as something that becomes less offensive with each viewing.
But that is no doubt due as much to becoming desensitized to the outrageously gross scenes as to a warming-up to the self-destructive, heroin-addicted characters.
The Voyager Company's Criterion Collection special laserdisc edition of the movie ($49.95) features nine deleted scenes, some of which even the filmmakers admit (on an alternate audio track) are incredibly amateurish. The rest are simply superfluous.
A quick video interview with the author of the novel, Irvine Welsh, offers few insights.
The most valuable element of the special edition is the printed glossary of the obscure terms heard in the movie, such as the title itself, which means keeping obsessive notes on the arrival and departure of trains.
The most amusing element of the edition is the commentary from the director, producer and screenwriter on a second audio channel in which they note how many critics tried to find some esoteric meaning in the crystal-clear water beneath the excrement-filled toilet bowl into which one of the characters climbs.
In fact, it was the only pool they could use, and the owners wouldn't let them dirty it.
DVD TIP: Warner Home Video's recent DVD release of "The Wild Bunch: Director's Cut" not only incorporates footage cropped shortly after the initial release of the bloated two-hour, 25-minute movie in 1969, but also features a 30-minute documentary called "The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage."
The grainy documentary, featuring the words but none of the actual voices of the cast and crew, is as disappointing as the feature itself.
(c) 1997, Scott Hettrick
Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate
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