cedde6

A young genius (or so we told) wishes to win the science fair by building an atomic bomb. The music swells up, the military are the bad guys and the youth of today is at the rescue. It's well acted, has John Lightgow (which is always a plus), competently directed and never boring or original. The one problem: the film's core idea. Are we really expected to sympathise with an adolescent and a nuclear device as a toy? Even a dim brain would have thought this was the mother of all bad ideas. Screenwriter/director Marshal Brickman must have realised this half way though and all of a sudden our little genius turns his irresponsible idea into an anti-nuclear stance. As a result, he comes across as a self righteous prat. Mind you, he's only young. But imagine what kind of man he'll grow up to be...

Steven Kovacks (Matthew Broderick), a designer who just separated from his girlfriend, has cable installed to his new apartment. Enters the quirky and slightly deranged cable guy (Jim Carey) whom then never exits...

A rather simple plot which became in 1996 a very odd and yet pleasurable film indeed. Although following a pretty straight forward structure, the script provides enough background to Jim Carey's character to make of him a lot more than just a run-of-the-mill weirdo while Matthew Broderick aptly counterbalance the excessive title role by a fair performance of the without-a-glitch nice guy of the piece. The constant referencing to TV culture also makes it an entertaining and strangely enough somewhat nostalgic experience. It is quite obvious that a fair amount of improvisation was incorporated to the piece to sometimes great effect (the "Silence of the Lamb" episode anyone?) which I suppose is probably the most effective way to work with someone such as Jim Carey. Curiously however, the main asset of the film also becomes at some point its main shortcoming. This was to Jim Carey what 1994's "The Good Son" was to Macauley Culkin: a departure from their comedic roots to more darker territories, but as opposed to Joseph Ruben's thriller, "The Cable Guy" seems to always hesitate to boldly go as far as its story would allow it to. In Jim Carey's work this is certainly darker than anything he had done up to that point but if this was also supposed to be a thriller then it felt a little bland, the star's antics sometimes overshadowing the actual depth of the story.

Still, don't let this put you off for "The Cable Guy", playfully directed by Ben Stiller, is one of these misunderstood films that are really worth watching for its clever take on the media in general and the hidden harm you find it does to people's mind once stripped off the apparent sense of comfort it is supposed to bring. It might have been done a little too light-heartedly maybe but at least it was done at all. And decently done too. This is a more serious film than it looks at first glance and that alone makes it an interesting one. No masterpiece mind you, but then again, it never pretended to be one. Like many films of that ilk, it was generally trashed upon by critics back then, in this case for its lack of downright slapstick-laugh-out-loud moments (Carey's salary the true reason for the furore) although they also criticized "Ace Ventura: when natures call" for being completely empty, the previous year. Oh well, sometimes one can never win...

It's got to take a lot of cheese for DC Comics to discreetly distance itself from one of its if not main then certainly most iconic characters. It took Michelle Pfeiffer's equally iconic portrayal of the Selina Kyle/Cat Woman character in Tim Burton's excellent "Batman Returns" to bring the idea of a Cat Woman film to the forefront. What might have sound like an appealing proposition back in 1992 somehow didn't feel as relevant more than a decade later. And for good reason...

The shy Patience Phillips stumbles upon the dirty secrets of her employer and gets killed for it. Not to worry though since she's brought back to life by some cat/deity of some kind and is reborn as the ballsy Catwoman so she can get an hair do, go shopping, do a bit of clubbing and incidentally find out who killed her and why... Oh and then she meets some generically good looking cop along the way... Vengeance and impossible love story ensues. The end. No, I mean it: the end.

Everything about "Catwoman" smells like left overs, the remains of a Sunday dinner stretched into a Monday casserole, exhausted from having been tried and done so many times before and bloated out of all proportions with stupidity and pointlessness so the script would be slightly thicker than a RSPCA leaflet. It would be very difficult to single out one particularly bad aspect of "Catwoman" from another as they are effectively interwoven into a complete disaster. This is such a formulaic Hollywood product that everything about its story (or lack of thereof) mired with plot holes the size of Australia is already known to whoever has ever watched a film before. Worse of all, it is so stereotypically marketed (even through its soundtrack) that all that was missing was Halle Berry snapping her fingers while saying to Sharon Stone "huh huh! No you don't girlfriend!". The performances of its cast is made of sheer non-commitment, an acute disaffection that is both understandable judging by the overall bêtise of the piece and insulting considering that people had to pay to see it. Last but certainly not least, the faux gloss of its CGI effects and the posturing of most of its camera works all conspire to hide the general lack of depth but actually manage to raise the bar of ugliness to brand new heights. So much so that it would be difficult to believe that it was all accidental.

It boggles the mind to think that Halle Berry could have ever thought "Catwoman" to be a good career move. Witnessing her, dressed for the oldest profession, struggling to act through this aimless debacle, the word "trapped" springs to mind. Was this some contractual obligations? What is certain here is that artistic integrity took a back seat after enough zeros were laid down on a cheque.