<a href="http://www.moviejuice.com/1999/doublejeopardy.htm">Click here for the full review!</a>
http://www.moviejuice.com/1999/doublejeopardy.htm
October 2, 1999
"I'll take contrived and far-fetched plots for one-hundred, Alex."
Judd-clan black sheep Ashley puts the "imp" in "implausible" in Double Jeopardy, the latest from that fine director Bruce Beresford, maker of Driving Miss Daisy and the more recent epic Good Work is Hard to Find in Hollywood Nowadays.
"What is 'career-slump,' Alex."
Ashley's got an impossibly fabulous and rich Marlboro Man husband who gives her a new sailboat in return for Ashley's gratuitous yet richly rewarding nude scene. No wonder I'm at full mast!
But Ashley wakes up adrift with blood on her hands and no hubby in sight. Whoops! Is he dead or did he just dump her for Annabeth Gish? No offense, Annabeth, but who in their right mind would do that? Any chick who shows her privates to a billion Oscar viewers is a woman you don't dump, Mr. Marlboro!
Double Jeopardy was originally intended as a plotline for an episode of TV's Diagnosis Murder, but according to star Dick Van Dyke: "A flying nanny and a chimney sweep who dances with cartoons is more believable than this shit."
So Ashley goes to "the big house" for wrongful-death. Make that "the big HAIR house" - this prison has its own hair salon: dozens of inmates, scissors-galore, and no guards. Did Ashley have to rush this house? Is she a felon or a pledge?
Isn't there supposed to be a scene where all the gals are in short-shorts and belly tees as warden Brigitte Nielsen herds them into the showers? Is that a different movie?
As luck would have it, fellow jailbird and Bride of Con-Air Edwarda G. Robinson informs Ashley that she can kill her hubby for real now because, according to the Harvard Movie-Law School, she can't be tried twice for the same crime as long as that crime isn't a sequel to Double Jeopardy.
You know you're in trouble when a character explains the core concept of a movie and the audience laughs.
Eduarda also informs her that we're forty minutes into this movie and it's about time for Tommy Lee Jones to show up, since the audience forgot he was even in the cast.
Ashley is paroled into a halfway house for wayward relatives of Country music stars. There, she cleverly escapes parole officer Tommy Lee thus becoming the latest in a long line of fugitives Tommy Lee is out to catch.
Does Tommy Lee read these scripts first or is the dialogue so second-nature he can just guess and come out right? Tommy, some advice: Plug your next script into MS Word and do a search and replace: "Will Smith" for "fugitive." Okay?
Ashley's chasing her son and her hubby. Tommy's chasing Ashley. And I need a chaser.
Ashley travels to picturesque New Orleans where scenery substitutes for scenario and funeral dirges play like Cab Calloway's opening band. There, Ashley gets stuck in a blinding rainstorm in the bustling French Quarter clogged by a million umbrellas where - SURPRISE - she's spotted by a cop!
If you think that sounds unlikely, an early draft of the script featured two mausoleums opening so the putrid remains of Howard Hughes and Jimmy Hoffa can shuffle out, grab her, and turn her in to the Feds. Here's some of the dialogue:
HOWARD HUGHES
Jimmy, grab her! I'm afraid of germs!
JIMMY HOFFA
Howard, I don't have my wits about me. I'm in a million pieces!
HOWARD HUGHES
Never mind, I'll cling to her mercilessly with my excruciatingly long fingernails!
And so on.
Get this: When she finally tracks down the Marlboro Man, she wins him in a Bachelor auction! Evidently, she just missed chances to bid on O. J. Simpson and Klaus Von Bulow.
When Tommy Lee catches up with the Marlboro Man and explains the fantastic notion that Ashley thinks he's her living dead husband, Marlboro says: "That's pretty far-fetched." Finally, something sensible in this crappy flick!
In the shocking climax, Tommy Lee finally gives in to the audience's total absence of credulity and captures Ashley by preposterously blowing fully deputized angels out of his butt. Wings flapping, the angels handcuff Ashley and take her back to movie jail, where the manicures and highlights are on the taxpayer and sauna privileges require a prison ID.
My advice on Double Jeopardy:
Wait for the home game.
Copyright 1999 Mark Ramsey. All rights reserved. NO PORTION MAY BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.
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------------------------------
Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 21:13:11 -0700
From: "DALUZDE/DALUZ, DENNIS C. (ISD-OPI/MNL)" <DALUZDE@OOCL.COM>
Subject: FW: [MV] worst movies
Jan de Bont's "The Haunting"
John Woo's Broken Arrow and Face Off a.k.a. watch John Travolta sneer, sneer
