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Evil Woman
*1/2
Cinema Releases - January 11, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 18. 93
minutes. Directed by Dennis Dugan. Written by Gred DePaul, Hank Nelken. Starring
Steve Zahn, Jack Black, Jason Biggs, Amanda Peet, Amanda
Detmer.
Amanda Peet is such a fox that I would probably
go out with her no matter what she did, as long as I was gettin' some. In
"Evil Woman", Jason Biggs isn't gettin' any, and yet he puts
up with her being curt and insulting, refusing to reciprocate oral sex, burning
his record collection, making him wax her legs and telling him that he can
never see his friends again. We're supposed to believe that it's because
he's always been gullible with women, but come on, there's a
line.
Peet plays an obvious bitch, and indeed everything
about "Evil Woman" is obvious. It has the energy level of a regular movie
but attempts gross-out madness, resulting in lifeless moments of random,
misguided wackiness. Look at the scene in which Peet is flung from a reclining
chair and then has nacho dip and beer spilt on her shirt. It's the kind of
thing the Farrelly brothers would make come alive, but here just sits on
the screen, stopping the action dead and encouraging audience
silence.
The film is made up of dim-witted stabs in the
dark. When will filmmakers learn that when they try too hard to be funny,
they will be anything but? Are we really supposed to believe that there would
be a kid working in a deli who thinks he's supposed to put the meat on the
outside of the bread? Or one who can't complete the phrase "small, medium
and..."? Were we really expected to laugh at a bearded lady who's obviously
just a short actress with a wig crudely sellotaped to her face? Can I stand
to see another movie that relies on the lame physical comedy of a guy pulling
a wild animal off his head? There's plenty of other stupid stuff that I can't
be bothered writing down, so you'll have to discover it (or preferably avoid
it) for yourself.
The plot is a bizarre tale whereby Biggs, convinced
that he's in love, is stuck in his abusive relationship with Peet, and so
his best friends, played by Steve Zahn and Jack Black, kidnap the woman and
chain her in their basement while attempting to set up Biggs with his high
school sweetheart. The high school sweetheart, incidentally, is in training
to become a nun. Don't ask.
Biggs is annoying as the central character; he
comes across a dorky pushover instead of a delusional nice-guy. Peet -- slinky,
sexy and dangerous -- is pretty interesting in her femme fatale role, but
she'd be more interesting if the faults of her character didn't go into such
overkill. Zahn, as always, plays a complete retard, although not as endearingly
as in "Happy, Texas" or "Riding in Cars with Boys", and Black proved in "High
Fidelity" that he's too good an actor for lines like "I can't grow hair on
my left nut."
"Evil Woman" was originally titled "Saving Silverman",
and I normally object when titles are changed, but "Saving Silverman" was
such a slick title that I can't help thinking this movie doesn't deserve
it. Many American critics named it the worst movie of last year; I didn't
think it was that awful, but hey, maybe it's because I was prepared. Any
movie with a Backstreet Boys song on the soundtrack deserves everything it
gets.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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