kidchamp dot net

11.16.04


saw ( 0 ). i'm willing to overlook weaknesses in any number of films: george hamilton's deeply tanned dracula in love at first bite, say, or the ewoks in return of the jedi, or helena bonham carter in anything. though it's a low-budget indie, saw gets no such pass. cary elwes squanders the goodwill he earned in the princess bride* by playing, perhaps accidentally, the least sympathetic 'hero' in recent memory. this could be the writers' fault - the character is an indifferent doctor, a philandering husband, an absentee father - but elwes's milquetoast-then-vaudeville performance is unquestionably his biggest crime. each and every audience member giggled through the last twenty minutes of the movie. danny glover, in turn, is utterly superfluous; as the 'sorta morgan freeman in seven, sorta captain ahab' figure, he's supposed to be avenging his dead partner and nailing the jigsaw killer once and for all. sadly, he spends most of his time making collages in his apartment; i don't even remember what happened to him at the end. finally, though horror movie logic is famously flawed, a guy who's 1) gone crazy in ten minutes, 2) hacked off his own foot, and 3) shot his only ally is never going to be a good Special Toilet-Prison Friend. begging for him to stick around, even if you're being menaced by a terminal cancer patient with weird puppets and a huge circuit city credit line, don't make no sense.


as we walked out of the theater, helpful employees handed us viactiv samples. unlike cary elwes, i am very concerned about my bone density - of the many varieties of Freaky Old Woman i could become one day, i fear Back-Hump Lady even more than Lipless Grimace and What's That Smell - and i consented to try them. they're more or less chocolate mint starburst, and nearly as disturbing as saw: ladies, beware!


*on princess bride cast members, saw starring fred savage would have been ten times better: he was a famously evil frat boy at stanford with us, and i wish him ill. he's my favorite child actor story from school, though: in class with one of my friends, he answered a question loudly and badly. the professor noted this. "everyone was looking at me," someone narrated. "i felt so stupid."