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Cinema
Releases - February 16, 2001
The Emperor's New
Groove
***
Certificate U. 78 minutes. Directed by Mark
Dindal. Written by David Reynolds, from a story by Roger Allers, Mark Dindal,
Matthew Jacobs, Chris Williams. With the voices of David Spade, John Goodman,
Eartha Kitt, Patrick Warburton.
Hannibal
*1/2
Certificate 18. 132 minutes. Directed by Ridley
Scott. Written by David Mamet, Steven Zaillian; based on the novel by Thomas
Harris. Starring Anthony Hopkins, Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman, Giancarlo
Giannini, Ray Liotta, Frankie R. Faison.
"Hannibal" announces fairly early
on that it isn't going to be a worthy sequel to "The Silence of the Lambs",
proceeds as acceptable fluff, then plunges as low as possible to turn into
an unwholesomely smarmy geek show. It's so glad to have cultural icon Hannibal
Lecter as its main character that it just has to become a circus act and
show us all its gross-out tricks.
Quick recap, for the record: "The Silence of the
Lambs" (1991), adapted from Thomas Harris's bestseller, was the chilling
story of FBI agent Clarice Starling tracking down a serial killer called
Buffalo Bill with the help of brilliant but demented psychiatrist Hannibal
'The Cannibal' Lecter, imprisoned in a mental hospital for killing and eating
his patients. Around wonderfully crafted horror and thriller plots, the agent
and the cannibal formed in their exchanges an eerily subtle bond through
mutual respect and shared wounds; Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins both won
Oscars for their performances, and the film itself was winner for Best Picture,
a cultural phenomenon, and one of the great movies of the last
decade.
Harris published the follow-up "Hannibal" in 1999
to much acclaim, and a movie deal was made straight away, something of an
indicator that it was simply a cash-in attempt. This was confirmed by the
fact that filming went ahead when Foster turned down the opportunity to reprise
her role, and Julianne Moore ("Short Cuts", Boogie Nights") stepped into
her shoes.
The story: Clarice presides over a botched drug
raid, is made a scapegoat and put on suspension. The case makes the news,
and her "old pal" Hannibal, who escaped custody at the end of "Silence",
starts a correspondence with her, saying they'd "have a lot of fun" if she
were to track him down. He's on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, knows that
if any information about him were to surface it would provoke interest, and
also knows that Clarice would be reinstated to handle the case, as she has
more experience with it than anyone else. Hannibal sees himself as doing
Clarice a favour; he also just enjoys playing games.
So the main thrust of the film is essentially
Clarice trying to trace Hannibal's whereabouts -- Venice, as it turns out,
and there is a parallel plot to show what a dangerous business the Lecter
case is, involving an Italian cop who has discovered Hannibal's identity
and is trying to find a way to capture him for reward.
"Hannibal" can at no point be taken seriously
as a sequel to "Silence" because there are too many fundamental flaws. The
very premise of Hannibal being able to roam the streets makes him a more
standard villain than he was in the 1991 picture; we're not scared of him
because of the psychological trauma he can inflict on people from his cell,
or the terrifying images his vivid words can conjure, but because we never
know when he might leap at someone's face and bite into it. The absence of
Jodie Foster is also impossible to ignore; the screenplay constantly relies
on references to the history between Hannibal and Clarice -- history we did
not see Moore have, and cannot believe she had, because Foster made too much
of an impression. Moore's presence draws attention to itself; it would have
been an impossible task for her to make the role her own.
None of this bothered me too much during the first
half of the film, which gleefully ignores thoughts of being good art and
just wants to be slickly lurid entertainment. Ridley Scott, always a reliable
studio craftsman, has turned out over an hour of solid, well-photographed,
well-edited conventional thriller material -- with all the obligatory cop
movie scenes, like the old flame within the department, interviews of witnesses,
the scene where the hero turns in gun and badge, and, of course, cat-and-mouse
games. This might not be magnificence, but it's more enjoyable than "The
Art of War".
But I lost all sympathy for the movie in its latter
passages, when it turned into a parade of nauseating atrocities. If this
had been a serious film, or even one that revealed its intentions from the
git-go, then its level of carnage might have been acceptable, but this is
more or less a standard dumb crime picture that suddenly decides it wants
to appal us and have a joke about it. It's not every movie where, in graphic
detail, a chap cuts off his own face and feeds it to a dog, someone gets
a lobotomy at the dinner table and carries on eating, or guys get thrown
to man-eating hogs in a customised torture pit. Rarer still are movies that
play this stuff for laughs -- none of it is shown in an obviously ironic
way, but we do get the impression that the filmmakers don't seem to care
about it much, and are simply laying it out to disgust us. The last scene
embodies this to offensive degree; its structure, its scoring and the wink
Hopkins plays it with all reveal that it's somehow supposed to be funny,
when Hannibal feeds brain to a child.
.
Speaking of children's fare -- Disney needs to
get its act together. Most of us remember with fondness the spectacular comeback
it made in the early 1990s, with delightful, witty animated features like
"Beauty and the Beast" (1991) and "Aladdin" (1992); perceptive viewers will
also notice how dreadfully the company has been losing its sense of humour
in the last few years, with stilted, overly serious efforts such as "Pocahontas"
(1995) and last year's abysmal "Dinosaur".
"The Emperor's New Groove" is a
step in the right direction, a silly but refreshing comedy about… um…
an arrogant royal who gets turned into a llama. The mouthy llama emperor
(voiced by David Spade) then has to reclaim his throne by travelling across
the countryside with a fat peasant (John Goodman) and seizing his position
back from a crazed witch (Eartha Kitt).
Yes, it's from way out of left field, and structurally
it's a predictable buddy comedy and series of chases. But damn, it's so much
more colourful than a lot of recent Disney fare, and its eccentricity is
often amusing, what with the entertainingly bumbling villains, and random
amusements like when the witch slips on a potion turning her into a cat that
emits a piercing, cackling laugh while bumping around like a
pinball.
The picture does have some big flaws. While Disney
cartoons traditionally feature amusing side characters -- Aladdin's monkey,
the Beast's domestic items, or the wonderful Eddie Murphy character in "Mulan"
(1998) -- "Emperor's New Groove" pretty much sticks to its central foursome,
and the absence of others is a shame. As well as that, the caustic egotism
of the Spade character gets annoying real quick, as do some of the arguments
he and Goodman have, because they seem to go on forever.
Never mind. Animated films don't need to be genius
-- they just need to make sure they don't do too much wrong. "The Emperor's
New Groove" might not have the heart or the wit of Disney films from a decade
ago, or even of the recent DreamWorks effort "The Road to El Dorado", but
hey, just compare it to "Dinosaur".
COPYRIGHT©
2001 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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