No rhyme .... even less reason
By Ervell E.Menezes

THIS lot of Hollywood films are anything but special. In the case of I Still Know What You did Last Summer, it is Hollywood’s penchant with sequels that works against itself. The parent film I Know What..., you will remember, was good till after the halfway mark. When it had its eye on the sequel, it ran into trouble. When four youngsters come across a body on the highway it is the start of their nightmare. That the body (never really dead) haunts them in the meat of the film.

In the sequel, a year has elapsed and poor Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) just can’t get the episode out of her mind. Her studies suffer, she is always hallucinating about this figure in an overcoat and with a hook at the end of his hand. And yet, when room-mate Karla Wilson (Brandy) wins four tickets to the Bahamas, she jumps at the offer to go out there. She tries to get that fisherman’s son Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr) to join them. When he refuses, she is forced to team up with Will Benson (Matthew Settle), whom Karla thrusts on her while she pairs with her over-talkative boy-friend Tyrell Martin (Mekhi Phifer), and he provides the film with some of its worst moments.

Not surprisingly, the group finds themselves stalked by a sinister character. By default, one gets a good insight into how these freebie prize-winners are treated. The story of the man in an overcoat with a hook for a palm is full of holes. There is little rhyme and even less reason. Director Danny Cannon has a weak script and he doesn’t really try to endow it with the right pauses. The result is a contrived horror story even weaker than the parent film. It’s like flogging a long "alive" ghost.

Pleasantville is a spoof on the 1950s. A case of being wise by hindsight. So when Bud Parker (Tobey Maguire), a 1990s kid hooked on reruns of a classic 1950s show Pleasantville is himself propelled into that world it is meant to update the 1950s with the 1990s thinking. Bud and his twin sister Jennifer (Rewese Witherspoon) virtually turn the placid 1950s topsy-turvy. The kids are far too progressive for the rest of the community and, what’s more, their parents also pick up some of their tricks, especially the mother Betty (Joan Allen) who cooks enough for her husband George (William H. Macy) while she looks for greener pastures.

The basic idea by director-scriptwriter Gary Ross is cleaver but is badly put across. There are dashes of humour and some good gags but the director seems to run out of ideas and gets confused on the issue of morality. If one takes up a bold subject like this one must be prepared to take a stand, not dilly-dally ones way about ending neither here nor there. The trouble with Hollywood is that there are an increasing number of such films. Wag the Dog was one of them. May be they should be writing the scripts from back to front and then the story can be better rounded off.

In that respect Still Crazy is a more honest film that harks back to the rock and roll era and focuses the efforts of a 1970s music group which tries to stage a comeback in the 1990s. At first I thought it might be a sequel to Stir Crazy which featured Gene Wilder (not my favourite comedian) and Richard Pryor. Directed by Sidney Poitier it was a mediocre effort.

Strange Fruit is the name of the music group and the story is set in England with the cockney dialect predominant. It was led by keyboard player Tony Costello (Stephen Rea). It is Costello’s son who goes about trying to revive the group.

It shows how many of the musicians, now in different walks of life, are ill at ease in what they are doing and yearn to come back to their favourite music. But little do they realise that the same problems that were responsible for their break-up will haunt them again – especially their massive egos. And quite an assortment of characters they are with guitarist Ray Simms (Bill Nighy), drummer "Beano" Baggot (Timothy Spall), basist Les Wickes (Jimmy Nail) and singer Karen Knowles (Juliet Aubrey) providing the variety.

Director Brian Gibson zeroes in on the characters without much ado. It is like rounding up of convicts in The Dirty Dozen or The Five-Man Army. But there is a good spread of music, humour and romance to wrap up a neat entertainment packet. Even if you are not a rock and roll buff, the story is strongly enough narrated. That is good cinema, not playing around with raw stock just because it is available.

This feature was published on May 16, 1999