Current Shareware 1994 January/SHAR194.ISO/articles/sun9310.zip/MOV1

Text File | 1993-10-01 | 12KB | 224 lines

Through The Magic Lantern
Copyright (c) 1993, Diamond & Shipp
All rights reserved




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                       WITH BRUCE DIAMOND AND RANDY SHIPP


        ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
        │  THE GOOD SON:  Joseph Ruben, director.  Ian McEwan,      │
        │  screenplay.  Stars Macauley Culkin, Elijah Wood, Wendy   │
        │  Crewson, David Morse, Daniel Hugh Kelly, Jacqueline      │
        │  Brooks, and Quinn Culkin.  Twentieth-Century Fox.        │
        │  Rated R.                                                 │
        └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘


     BRUCE DIAMOND:  Welcome to the October installment of THROUGH THE
                     MAGIC LANTERN.  I'm Diamond...

     RANDY SHIPP:  ...and I'm Shipp!  This month we're bringing you a
                    creepy Halloween tale from the crypt, guaranteed
                    to send shivers down your spine and make your
                    blood freeze in your...what's that?  Oh, OK.  So
                    it's only the Halloween edition, but we weren't
                    able to find a real creepy monster movie.
                    Instead, we bring you a tale of evil in the guise
                    of a little boy.  This month we review Joseph
                    Ruben's THE GOOD SON.

     DIAMOND:  Unfortunately, that does set the tone for this month's
               review.  Joseph Ruben has directed a couple of other
               thrillers that worked, THE STEPFATHER and SLEEPING WITH
               THE ENEMY, but he's kinda lost his edge here.  THE GOOD
               SON is numbingly predictable, and has the added
               distraction of putting Macauley Culkin in a "bad seed"
               role, one that just doesn't seem to work on him.
               Culkin, of course, is the eponymous good son, whose
               behavior is invisible to the adults around him.  Only
               his cousin, Mark (Elijah Wood, the better actor of the
               two leads) and his sister, Connie (played by Macauley's
               real sister, Quinn Culkin) see the "monster" lurking in
               Henry's soul.

     SHIPP:  And that "monster" is too monstrous to really be
             entertaining.  I knew the movie bothered me the day I saw
             it, but I wasn't able to put my finger on it until later.
             What bothered me most about the film was the carefree
             manner in which Henry goes about his dirty business, and
             the filmmaker to me seemed to be trying to make me accept
             it all.  It's hard to articulate, and has little to do
             with the technical quality of the film (which I'll get to
             soon enough), but the premise of the story left me with a
             bad taste in my mouth, perhaps because of the bad taste
             in which it was made.


     DIAMOND:  You know, that's an interesting point, and I'm glad
               we've gotten to it so early in the review.  Critics and
               regular movie-goers alike are reacting badly to this
               film, and mostly due to the idea of casting a young
               child in an evil role.  Call me the Last American
               Insensitive, but the idea of a good kid gone bad
               doesn't bother me that much.  There's a long history to
               this motif, going all the way back to the archetypical
               bad seed in the stage play and movie of the same name.
               Then you've got CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED, THE LITTLE GIRL
               WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE (with Jodie Foster and Martin
               Sheen), THE EXORCIST, AUDREY ROSE, and the godawful
               OMEN trilogy....some of the movies are good, some are
               bad, but overall the theme doesn't disgust me.


     SHIPP:  Well, I think the part that was hardest for me to swallow
             wasn't the bad kid...heck, I LIKED most of those movies.
             The problem was that Ruben tried excuse Henry's behavior
             with the jealous-of-baby bit.  I mean, in EXORCIST, the
             KID wasn't evil.  I dunno...like I said, I can't put my
             finger on it.  If we were able to see where the whole
             thing came from, I might have been more sympathetic.  In
             the end though, it wasn't the premise, but the execution
             that I had the biggest problem with.


     DIAMOND:  You've pinpointed a couple of the film's deficiencies.
               First, there's no earthly reason for Henry to act the
               way he does, outside of needing to make this movie.
               Jealousy of his baby brother just doesn't ring true,
               even though Henry does tell his cousin that once you
               discover you can get away with anything, you're free.
               In effect, Henry has discovered his own lack of a moral
               center and is reveling in it.  That's way too
               sophisticated an idea for a ten-year-old to grasp and
               understand.  And it's too bad that THE GOOD SON has no
               idea how to present the idea in a sophisticated way.


     SHIPP:  Boy, if philosophical considerations such as these are a
             problem for the ten-year-old Henry, how are we to swallow
             the idea that his thirtysomething PARENTS haven't noticed
             the little beast?  This is the part of the review where I
             would list each ridiculous situation one after the other
             if I were sure I wouldn't...ahem...spoil it for someone.
             Basically, though, the problem with the movie, beginning
             to end, is that the audience is supposed to allow
             themselves to be led on this horrible journey, and never
             question anything.  The slightest skepticism causes the
             whole story to fall to pieces.  Yeah, right...two days
             into the visit, Henry has everyone thinking Mark is
             psycho...



     DIAMOND:  Right, when Henry himself is actually the psycho.
               We're given a perfunctory reason why the adults should
               believe Mark is disturbed -- his mother has just passed
               away, and he's staying with his aunt and uncle while
               his father goes overseas on a sales trip -- but on
               closer scrutiny, how the hell did Henry fool his
               parents, anyway?  If he's this warped and twisted,
               unless they're blind and completely insensitive, his
               parents would have been on to him long before Mark
               joins their household.  I'll even go so far as to spoil
               one of those situations you mentioned.  Henry talks
               Mark into helping him carry a lifesize dummy to a
               bridge overpass, where Henry just up and dumps the
               dummy onto the highway below.  He causes a multi-car
               collision, but there's no follow-up to the incident.
               The two boys are in PLAIN SIGHT of the highway, but
               there's no mention of them or of the dummy on the TV
               news later.  THE GOOD SON is chock-a-block *full* of
               holes like this.


     SHIPP:  I think the lack of witnesses (except, of course, Mark)
             at the frozen lake is just about the same.  By the time
             we've been through four or five of these beat-you-over-
             the-head expositions, we've more than gotten the point.
             The scenes in which Henry oh-so-cleverly traps Mark are
             just about as subtle and well executed.  The entire film
             lacks subtlety.  Maybe that's why, even when Ruben
             figures out the pacing and the adrenaline thing by the
             end, I still thought it was flat and boring.  We spend
             five minutes with a cliffhanger (pardon the pun) ending,
             the outcome of which was a foregone conclusion from
             fifteen minutes into the picture.

     DIAMOND:  Here's one of the points where we differ, but not by
               much.  I knew the ending was a foregone conclusion, but
               as you noted, Ruben has deduced the pacing and tension
               by this time (a little late, I'd say), and I found the
               ending pretty darn gripping ... if you'll pardon the
               pun.


     SHIPP:  I don't know...I think Ruben may have had one last chance
             to redeem the picture at the end, to give some meaning to
             it all, but he let it slip from his fingers (if YOU'LL
             pardon the pun), and we ended up with more of the same
             crap we'd seen for the last hour or so.


     DIAMOND:  Well, admittedly, Ruben didn't exactly bring us to the
               very edge of excitement (if *you'll* pardon the pun),
               but if he had directed the picture from the very
               beginning with this same kind of energy, he might never
               have had to provide a meaning to it at all.  Evil for
               evil's sake, as Mark tries to explain to a therapist
               halfway through the film.


     SHIPP:  A therapist who needs her license pulled for not
             recognizing the wretch for what he is...whatta movie full
             of dense people...


     DIAMOND:  I really don't have much to add.  Elijah Wood is good
               as Mark, but he was more endearing in THE ADVENTURES OF
               HUCK FINN earlier this year.  Quinn Culkin looks like
               her brother, and may turn out to be a more genuine
               actor; we'll just have to see.  The adults are more or
               less cyphers, aside from Wendy Crewson as Henry's mom,
               who spends most of the film pining away for her dead
               baby boy, drowned in three inches of bath water a few
               years before.


     SHIPP:  I'm with you...Elijah Wood is OK, even if he is written
             into more unbelievable fixes in one movie than any other
             kid actor in history.  And Quinn is cute.  I'm no closer
             to liking Macauley, but I may at least raise an eyebrow
             if I see Quinn Culkin in the credits of a movie.  As you
             say, we'll have to see.  All in all, I think I'd wait for
             video if I had it to do again, and even then, I think I'd
             spend my bucks on a *good* evil kid movie.  Heck, it's
             Halloween...about time for another look at THE EXORCIST.
             Leave THE GOOD SON and its rating of 3 out of 10 on the
             shelf.


     DIAMOND:  Wow, I thought you hated THE GOOD SON more than I did.
               I can't see rating it more than 2 out of 10.  Maybe
               we'll have better luck with next month's movie, as we
               continue the long march towards the holiday season.
               Till next time, I'm Laurel...


     SHIPP:  ...and I'm the Cisco Kid!  Please place your popcorn and
             soda containers in the proper receptacle!  See you next
             month for the November edition of THROUGH THE MAGIC
             LANTERN.