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Film Clips
SEPTEMBER 21, 1998:
 PASSION IN THE DESERT. Rather astonishingly, this film
is about a man who falls in love with a leopard. The setting is
Egypt, the time is the late 18th century, and soldier Augustin
Robert (Ben Daniels) gets lost in the dunes but is miraculously
saved by a pretty spotted kitty cat. Perhaps she likes his over-tanned
skin, or his Hercules-style mane of flowing bleached hair.
Or his shaved chest. Or his big muscular body. The two set up
housekeeping, but naturally such a love is not destined to last,
even if the man involved is a French man. This movie certainly
gets points for being strange, and for having a cast that consists
almost entirely of a man and a four-footed creature. There is
little dialogue. Yet despite this, it's curiously flat and lackluster.
Dare I say it--there's just no chemistry between Daniels and that
darn cat. --Richter
SIMON BURCH. Hollywood has the Oscars on its mind, and,
since films about mentally and/or physically challenged people
are surefire Oscar bait (Children of a Lesser God, Rain
Man, Forrest Gump), Disney goes for the jugular with
a story about the very, very tiny Simon Burch (Ian Michael Smith).
The unfortunate result is an assemblage of loosely related scenes
which milk the shock value of Smith's physical appearance in an
attempt to force viewers onto an emotional roller coaster. A weak
plot does surface about two-thirds into the movie, but by then
the audience has already been subjected to at least a dozen references
to Simon as a miracle/hero/instrument of God, a Forrest Gump-ian
use of an overly obvious soundtrack, and a whole lotta wooden
child acting (not Smith). The real tragedy of the film is that
its dramatic impact derives not from Simon's character, and the
obstacles a norm-obsessed society tosses his way, but rather from
exploiting how different Smith looks. Jim Carrey provides
cutesy narration and the always likable Oliver Platt contributes
to the few digestible scenes. --Higgins
SLUMS OF BEVERLY HILLS. This manipulative, cautious and
contrived comedy came out of the stifling Sundance Workshop, and
it shows. Like every other movie these days, it's set in the '70s.
The won't-this-be-touching story focuses on a young girl coming
of age, and her efforts to accept her body and her family, who
are a little off-beat, but not so off-beat as to challenge the
audience's beliefs or sensibilities. Alan Arkin does his usual
decent job playing the aging single father. (God forbid there
should be a single mother in a lighthearted film...single mothers
equal tragedy and pain.) The jokes are all reasonably funny, there's
enough sex to make it titillating but not enough to push it into
controversy, and there's a general lack of plot. Perhaps the most
interesting thing about this intentionally forgettable film are
the body doubles: both Marissa Tomei and newcomer Natasha Lyonne
must show their breasts at least twice, but their faces are never
in the shot, and the actresses hired to stand in for them sport
bodies with no visual relation to the ones they're supposed to
represent. A real oddity, that: There's Tomei, she gratuitously
opens her robe, and suddenly there's a shot from the neck down
of someone else's body. I guess if you're doing tits-for-tits-sake
you might as well bring in the best you can find, and damn the
torpedoes. Other than the curious interest that provides, though,
the film refuses to take any chances or do anything risky, and
winds up being so benign as to be a bit boring. Perhaps this can
be blamed on the heavy and notoriously treacly hand of Robert
Redford, who produced this cowardly, if somewhat humorous, project.
--DiGiovanna
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