Current Shareware 1994 January/SHAR194.ISO/articles/sun9310.zip/MOV2

Text File | 1993-09-20 | 6KB | 103 lines

Movie Reviews
Copyright (c) 1993, Bruce Diamond
All rights reserved



              (Reprinted with permission from Lights Out # 28)

        ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
        │  NEEDFUL THINGS:  Fraser C. Heston, director.  W.D.       │
        │  Richter, screenplay.  Based on the book by Stephen       │
        │  King.  Stars Ed Harris, Max Von Sydow, Bonnie Bedelia,   │
        │  J.T. Walsh, Amanda Plummer, Ray McKinnon, Duncan         │
        │  Fraser, Valri Bromfield, and Shane Meier.  Columbia      │
        │  Pictures.  Rated R.                                      │
        └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

          Reviewing another Stephen King movie is like talking about a
     Needless Thing, based on recent screen excursions.  Each director
     brings his own vision to the screen using King mostly just as a
     flimsy framwork to hang the story on, not as the solid foundation
     he needs (vis. THE LAWNMOWER MAN).  The only director who has
     successfully married his unique visual style with King's material
     is Brian De Palma, who directed CARRIE (1976).  Rob Reiner
     directed two highly successful King movies, STAND BY ME (1986)
     and MISERY (1990) while remaining true to the source material,
     but he doesn't have as wildly individualistic a visual style as
     De Palma or Stanley Kubrick (who turned THE SHINING into a
     crashing bore in 1980).  The point here is *any* director, visual
     stylist or not, can screw up a Stephen King movie.

          The sense of humor evident in NEEDFUL THINGS is not my
     source of dissatisfaction with the film.  Indeed, many of King's
     novels display this same kind of grim humor, and Max Von Sydow,
     who plays a devilish shopkeeper in Castle Rock, delivers them
     with just the right amount of impish maliciousness.  Several of
     the one-liners are mere padding and seemingly out-of-character
     for the urbane Leland Gaunt (Von Sydow), but that's a relatively
     minor quibble.

          No, my major argument with NEEDFUL THINGS is the wholesale
     emasculation of King's central theme:  be careful of what you
     want, for you may get it.  King's characters possess great
     desires for their needful things (Brian Rusk's Mickey Mantle
     card, Nettie Cobb's figurine, etc.) -- they become as dependent
     on these desires as their need for air to breathe and food to
     eat.  King shows us the down side of material possession in no
     uncertain terms.  The film, however, tends to downplay and
     whitewash the characters' desires -- what Leland Gaunt supplies
     to the townspeople are merely wantful things, not needful things.
     By removing the core of this desire, director Fraser C. Heston
     and screenwriter W.D. Richter have left us with a film full of
     lifeless, one dimensional characters that we care little about.

          The portrayal of desire, the obsession with true needful
     things, is left to the film's "bad guys": town selectman Danforth
     (Buster) Keeton (J.T.  Walsh) and town drunk Hugh Priest (Duncan
     Fraser).  Keeton's full ofhis own self-importance and a compul-
     sion to bet on the horses, which leads to his embezzlement of
     $20,000 from town funds.  Hugh is full of alcohol and a paranoia
     that almost matches Keeton's, although his fury doesn't claim as
     many lives.

          Two of the town's women are not as obsessed with their
     needful things as they are with revenging themselves on each
     other, for every needful thing that Leland Gaunt sells has two
     prices -- the cash price and the psychic price.  "All I want you
     to do is play a harmless prank," he tells his customers.  "Nobody
     will know it's you, I promise." So when Nettie Cobb (Amanda
     Plummer) discovers her dog has been skinned alive (a prank played
     by Hugh) and Wilma Jerzyk (Valri Bromfield) discovers all her
     windows have been broken (a prank played by Brian Rusk), they
     blame each other and have a knife fight on Wilma's turkey farm.
     And this just proves my point about the watering-down of desire
     in this film: I can't even remember what Wilma's needful thing
     is.

          The two leads, Sheriff Alan Pangborn (Ed Harris) and Polly
     Chalmers (Bonnie Bedelia) are believably portrayed, although
     Polly's crippling athritis, a major plot point in the novel, and
     Pangborn's extreme distrust of Gaunt are also watered down,
     almost to the point of minor character quirks.  Even their
     romance, and the betrayal engineered by Gaunt in the novel, has
     been made rather incidental to the rest of the story.

          Yes, NEEDFUL THINGS is a relatively big book, and not
     everything can be included in a film verions.  But this movie is
     so shallow in its treatment of the subject matter that motiva-
     tions and character empathy are rendered beside the point.  Even
     the final Ragnarok-like inferno that consume Castle Rock in the
     novel has been turned into a single explosion and two car crashes
     on the town's main drag.  To do it up right, NEEDFUL THINGS has
     to be done big.  It is, after all, Stephen King's final Castle
     Rock story.

          Unless director Fraser C. Heston improves considerably over
     this and his TNT work (TREASURE ISLAND, starring his dad,
     Charlton Heston), we can only hope that this is his last feature
     film.

     RATING:  2