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 ADDICTED TO LOVE. There's so much wrong with this movie
you'd need a chart to explain it all: Among other things, it glorifies
stalking, promotes violence against innocent French people, and
stars Meg Ryan. Matthew Broderick plays a sweet-natured but deeply
deranged astronomer who destroys the life of his ex-fiancée's
new boyfriend (Tchéky Karyo). He's helped in this endeavor
by some illegal listening equipment, his collection of cockroaches,
and a violently unstable woman (Ryan) who was Karyo's last girlfriend.
Of course, while making their ex-beloved's lives miserable, Broderick
and Ryan fall in love. Nonetheless, I couldn't help thinking this
whole plot could have been avoided with a simple restraining order.
--DiGiovanna
AUSTIN POWERS. Saturday Night Live castaway Mike
Meyers is in his element as "International Man of Mystery"
Austin Powers, a swinging '60s fashion photographer by day, mod
undercover British Intelligence agent by night. He's also his
own arch nemesis, Dr. Evil, who catapults the action 30 years
into the future by launching himself into outer space in a vessel
shaped like the Big Boy, in which he and his cat are cryogenically
frozen. This psychedelic romp through the spy-TV conventions of
the '60s is like a Monkees episode choreographed by Michael
Jackson on acid, with a bit of Get Smartness and James
Bondage co-opted to hilarious effect. It's not a spoof, really.
It's just Mike Myers having a blast veering between sophisticated
and juvenile as an unfrozen swinger chasing down evil and free
love in the inhospitable '90s. For revelers in cameo appearances
and pop culture references of days of yore, there's only one thing
you can say about this satirical carnival of cheap laughs: "Smashing,
baby!" --Wadsworth
BREAKDOWN. This is one of those small, seemingly inconsequential
movies that sneaks in and proves to be worlds more entertaining
than its "blockbuster" competition. The premise is simple
enough: While driving across the desert, yuppie Kurt Russell's
wife Kathleen Quinlan is cleverly kidnapped by yahoos, and Russell
has to save her with few resources and even less information.
Writer/director Jonathan Mostow neatly builds a queasy, stranded-feeling
tension that rarely ebbs, and smartly never lets Russell seem
like anything other than an ordinary guy. The resulting payoffs
are huge, and at its best Breakdown recalls Steven Spielberg's
Duel, or that great cropduster sequence in Hitchcock's
North by Northwest. The lubberly J.T. Walsh adds a healthy
dose of creepiness as a two-faced truck driver. --Woodruff
CITIZEN RUTH. A comedy about abortion? For that alone,
Citizen Ruth deserves high marks--if you believe one role
of popular art is to tackle the issues of our times. If you don't,
you probably won't be interested in Citizen Ruth, which
careens between stereotypes of doughy, suburban Baby Savers on
a crusade for God, and militant, lesbian moon-goddess worshippers
intent on keeping feminist slogan-slinging alive. Caught in the
middle is the stereotypical Ruth, a paint-huffing white trash
nowhere girl who becomes the unwitting poster child of both camps.
Laura Dern plays Ruth, an uncompromisingly honest loser who becomes
the center of public spectacle when a judge quietly suggests she
can reduce her sentence if she decides to "take care of her
situation" while in jail. Some of the satire is scathingly
apropos to our media-crazed, capitalistic culture--such as the
bidding war that ensues to win Ruth's allegiance--but even the
equal-opportunity-offender approach seemed to wear thin early
on, seeming more clichéd than cutting. Still, when was
the last time a spirited debate about abortion was fair game for
a few good laughs? It may not be a perfect comedy, but at least
it's a comparatively intelligent one...and long, long overdue.
(The movie opened more than a year ago in New York.) --Wadsworth
THE FIFTH ELEMENT. Writer and director Luc Besson sacrifices
sensibility for style in this excessively fashion-designed science
fiction movie. Besson, known for Subway, La Femme Nikita
and The Professional, tries here for a sort of Blade
Runner/Star Wars hybrid but ends up with something closer
to Stargate meets Pret a Porter. But it's not just
another sci-fi flop--the film has a distinct French flavor (even
hero Bruce Willis' cat looks French)--and you can't take your
eyes off the screen even when it's mind-numbing to watch. As with
The Professional, the story places intense emphasis on
the preternatural beauty of a young woman (Milla Jovovich) who,
this time, is turned into a half-naked, super-powerful-yet-sweetly-vulnerable
Raggedy Ann doll. Gary Oldman once again plays the villain; now
a new-wave Hitler cowboy with buck teeth. If Besson took any of
this seriously, the movie would reek; he didn't, so it's just
an eye-poppingly bizarre experience. --Woodruff
TRIAL AND ERROR. A predictable, flatline Hollywood legal
comedy (a perfunctory cross between My Cousin Vinny and
Something Wild) without an ounce of bite or innovation.
The leads make the most of a formulaic script dealing with an
actor (Michael Richards) pretending to be a lawyer to fill in
for his high-strung, Type A attorney buddy (Jeff Daniels) who
gets lost in the Nevada desert, falls in love with a beautiful
blonde and discovers all the important things in life. The film
strives for a surface kind of cynicism, only to invoke the Love
Conquers All escape clause in the end. One of the perennial and
most irritating of Hollywood messages: We all need to let our
hair down and stop trying to overachieve in order to find ourselves.
If it's so damn easy to drop all your over-reaching money grubbing
material ways and fulfill your inner self, then why is Spago double
booked through the end of the millennium? --Marchant
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