snafooey

I read the book first and I can only say that I feel sorry for its author, Carl Hiassen. The book was an extremely funny satire of capitalism, politics, gender roles, etc. and the film was just an excuse for the lead actor to show off her surgically enhanced body. I mentioned the book in a university tutorial for my course on literary satire, and no one would believe me that it was not trash because they could not separate it from the movie which followed it. Too bad - the book is good enough to have warranted a script that stays true to the original story rather than exchange wit and sophistication for extended dance sequences and the lubricatory possibilities of yogurt.

The two most disturbing elements of this movie were not the blood and gore nor the "deep" social commentary. What I found disturbing were the pathetic attempts at symbolism (for example, when Daniel Stern's character would rather die than part with his pristine white minivan)and the fact that a group of men at a bachelor party are meant to be taken by the audience as wholly representative of suburban decay. If this film was about women on the road accidentally murdering someone, it would be..."Thelma and Louise" and labelled as feminist or women-centred and dealing with the "female experience." Yes, Cameron Diaz's psychotic bride seems to epitomize the heavy-handed point Peter Berg is trying to convey, but her character does not seem to prove that she can play with the big boys (which is a patronizing concept in itself)as much as it re-enforces the limited stereoypes women must work within in order to be in film at all.

Why am I focussing on this particular point, you may ask, when so many films are as sexist and narrow-minded as this one? I am so disgusted with this film because it seems so smug and self-satisfied with its satirical status that it does not seem to realize that it is only recycling tired cliches with a lot of blood thrown on top. I have no problems with shock value, but not when it is unsubstantiated or unwarranted.

The destruction of the suburban myth and the decay of American society (blah blah blah...just kidding) is an interesting and important theme to explore, but it must be done with more intelligence and more subtlety than this film. If you want to see a film that truly achieves what this film aspires to, rent "Heathers," or even the fairy-tale "Edward Scissorhands." If you want to see an exercise in obnoxious post-Tarantino (whose films I happen to enjoy very much)filmmaking, rent this film and time how long it takes you to either fall asleep or run away screaming - not in terror, but in embarrassment.

This film completely blew me away when I saw it for the first time in a theatre in a suburb just outside of Toronto; I was thirteen and I had never seen anything so provocatively hilarious or as cleverly satirical. It immediately became one of my favourite films and I still believe that its lack of box-office success was in part due to the fact that it deals with issues people are often unwilling to discuss and pokes fun at characteristics that people may not necessarily want to recognize in themselves. My brother saw this film with his then girlfriend - she hated it so much, she walked out. I think that a lot of the satire in this film has either been misunderstood or lost on many people. It doesn't help that despite its status as a dark comedy satirizing teenaged angst, it has a tacked on Hollywood ending (the original ending supposedly had the entire school exploding, but that would have been too much for the distributors). Still, even with its surreal storyline and execution, this movie said more about what was going on in the Eighties than every John Hughes movie combined.