Friday, June 8, 2012

The Naked Man



Runtime: 98 minutes

Directed by: J. Todd Anderson

Starring: Michael Rappaport, Michael Jeter, John Carroll Lynch, Rachael Leigh Cook

From: October Films

Here is a movie that I know I saw like two minutes of on TV in what had to be '99, but never checked out and watched in full until tonight. What was an inpetus was that I was fooling around on YouTube and stumbled across a clip that had some brief scenes from the movie, and I saw that a barely 18 year old Ms. Cook was dressed like a biker chick from the 80's, with giant hair, a leather top, ripped fishnets... well, it shot up... I mean, the movie shot up to the top of the queue on Netflix.

I'll admit that what I've seen from The Coen Brothers, I am not a big fan. Too strange and off-putting for me. I HATE The Big Lebowski and I have zero comprehension as to why so many people around my age think it's one of the greatest films ever made. Maybe I've seen the wrong stuff, though, and thus sometime soon I'll try to watch at least one or two of their movies so that I can talk about it on here and possibly piss people off if I don't like them. How does that relate to this movie? Well, it was co-written by Ethan Coen and director Anderson, who has been a long time storyboard artist for the brothers.

The plot on IMDb sounds rather simplistic: “A man takes matters into his own hands when a pharmaceutical kingpin moves into his town to cause some real trouble.”

What the plot should actually read is, “I watch a movie about how a chiropractor and part time indy pro wrestler with pregnant girlfriend in tow reunite with their parents, who run a drugstore/soda shop in a small town. You get to see how he trained to defend himself from bullies as a teenager and he clashed with his father as he did not want his son to be a chiropractor. They do reunite, though, and soon thereafter a guy with spina bifida and a fat guy who dresses and acts like Elvis kills the parents and seriously hurt the girlfriend due to the store not having a handicapped ramp. Then, the movie dives in a surrealistic, absuridst, and incredibly off-putting mess as Mr. Chiropractor snaps and he starts killing people as he meets up with biker babe Cook and they eventually get around to getting revenge on the crippled guy and the fat guy as you see strange characters such as an indy promoter from seemingly the 30's and gumshoe detectives from seemingly the 40's... and it's just not for me.”

I swear, what I just wrote above is entirely accurate. The movie was just too weird and strange for my tastes, but the biggest thing is that it was so off-putting. That sort of thing will make me not like a film rather quickly. Truth be told, Cook kept me watching the movie; otherwise I would have turned it off in disgust. Besides being rather easy on the eyes, her character was rather normal, at least in comparison to the others.

At least there were some humorous moments and stuff I laughed at, such as Rachael having “Love” tattooed on the top of one boob and “Hate” tattooed on the top of the other boob. That is a nice take on The Night Of The Hunter gag... and speaking of that, there's another movie I saw and thought was overrated, despite Robert Michum and Lillian Gish both being pretty awesome in it.

I'll be back Sunday night with a new review.

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