‘Willard’ remake favors camp over substance

loading...

In theaters

WILLARD, written and directed by Glen Morgan, based on a screenplay by Gilbert Ralston, 105 minutes, PG-13.

Just to keep things in perspective as Hollywood takes tentative steps toward its biggest night of the year, along comes Glen Morgan’s “Willard,” a movie about rats competing for a different sort of reward.

The film, a remake of the 1971 original, stars Crispin Glover as Willard, a Norman Bates wannabe so relentlessly hen-pecked by his overbearing mother, Henrietta (Jackie Burroughs), and so cruelly berated by his boss, Frank (R. Lee Ermey), that he does what any sensible person would do in a similar situation. That’s right, he befriends scores of rats and enlists them to do his dirty work.

With a blistering edge that’s sometimes uncomfortably dark, Morgan’s movie is all flash and style, favoring camp over substance, a misreading of the original film, which had heart in spite of its B-movie underpinnings.

The new film begins promisingly with a slick title sequence that seems inspired by the work of Darren Aronofsky and David Fincher as filtered through a Nine Inch Nails video – lots of sketchy, scratchy images seething with malice. After that, the movie is off and slumming through Tim Burton territory, digging deep into the well of Willard’s basement to find a treasure of tiny souls eager for his affection.

To earn it, these rats – which multiply at a rate that suggests Willard’s basement is the city’s red light district – must learn a wealth of tactical maneuvers, such as how to chew through tires, wires and walls, and then, as Willard’s home and work life become unreasonably hostile, how to attack on command.

Helping Willard is his favorite rat, Socrates – a genial, white puff of snow – and also his least-favorite rat, Ben, a lumbering sewer beast who longs for Willard’s affection the very way that Willard himself longs for the world’s affection. Unable to see the connection, Willard rejects Ben, thus igniting his rage and turning this movie into a fierce tug of war between the two.

Unfortunately, what Morgan never explains is the reason Willard rejects Ben and ultimately comes to mistreat him. Why does he dislike him so? By not exploring that crucial thread, this already fragile movie snaps, with all of the sympathy going to the rats and none of it to Willard, who, in the end, surfaces from the basement as the real beast.

Grade: C+

On video and DVD

AUTO FOCUS, directed by Paul Schrader, written by Michael Gerbosi, 107 minutes, rated R.

Paul Schrader’s “Auto Focus” has all the elements of a sordid potboiler – and then some. In less than two hours, it packs in the poison of sudden fame, a sex-addicted television star, strip joints galore, orgies, prostitutes, homemade sex tapes, bitter divorces, bisexual undertones – and a gruesome murder in a seedy Arizona apartment complex.

It’s enough to make you think that sweeps week has hit the video store. The film focuses on the life and ugly death of Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear), the affable star of the 1965-71 hit sitcom, “Hogan’s Heroes,” who was bludgeoned to death in 1978 after a well-documented history of sleaze, self-delusion and an obsession with sex.

Since those in the know will know from the get-go that Crane’s days are numbered even as the film begins, Schrader’s challenge was to make a film that explored the reckless behavior that cost the actor so much – his two marriages, his television career, his friends and, ultimately, his own life – while shedding light on the psychology behind the compulsion that fueled his behavior.

Schrader succeeds in the former, but he fails in the latter. Indeed, while there are plenty of scenes in which Crane and his friend, John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe), lure women to their homes or hotel rooms for orgies they’d tape on video, “Auto Focus” doesn’t explain why Crane was so stupidly indiscrete in a town filled with so many wagging tongues.

Instead, the director, a self-described lapsed Calvinist who has made his share of films moralizing life’s more salacious pitfalls – “Hard Core,” “American Gigolo” and “The Comfort of Strangers” among them – is only ever interested in the sex.

He’s drawn to it to the point of distraction, focusing more on the mechanics of the act than on the motivation behind the irrationally of Crane’s nighttime excursions. As well-acted as the film is by Kinnear, Dafoe, Rita Wilson as Crane’s first wife and Ron Liebman as his longtime agent, “Auto Focus” unfortunately is only content to observe.

Grade: C

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Tuesdays and Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.

Renting a video or a DVD? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores. Those capped and in bold print are new to video stores this week.

About a Boy ? A-

AUTO FOCUS ? C

The Banger Sisters ? B

Barbershop ? B+

Blood Work ? B-

Blue Crush ? B+

The Bourne Identity ? B+

Brown Sugar ? C+

City by the Sea ? C

8 MILE ? C

8 Women ? B

Feardotcom ? F

Formula 51 ? F

The Four Feathers ? C

Full Frontal ? D

The Good Girl ? A-

Half Past Dead ? F

Ice Age ? B

Igby Goes Down ? A

Insomnia ? A

I Spy ? C-

Jason X ? Bomb

Knockaround Guys ? D

Lilo & Stitch ? B+

Lovely and Amazing ? A

The Master of Disguise ? F

Men in Black II ? C-

Minority Report ? A-

Moonlight Mile ? B

My Big Fat Greek Wedding ? A-

One Hour Photo ? A-

Possession ? B

Reign of Fire ? C+

The Ring ? C

The Road to Perdition ? A-

Serving Sara ? D

Simone ? B

Signs ? B-

Spider-Man ? A-

Spy Kids 2 ? B+

Stuart Little 2 ? A-

Sweet Home Alabama ? B-

Swept Away ? D-

SWIMFAN ? C

The Tuxedo ? C-

Unfaithful ? B-

White Oleander ? B+

XXX ? B