SLAM DANCE
A film review by altera!bert
Copyright 1987 altera!bert
This is a review for a movie that came and went (in the San Jose area) in one week about a month ago. I didn't figure it would be of any use but then you can never tell when these bombs get dropped elsewhere around the country.
The name of the movie is SLAM DANCE and yes, it's a stupid title and yes, it was a stupid movie but not in the way the title might suggest (i.e., it was not aimed at teenagers).
For background, SLAM DANCE is by Wayne Wang, who made DIM SUM and CHAN IS MISSING, both good movies. It stars Tom Hulce, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Virginia Madsen, Harry Dean Stanton, John Doe, Adam Ant, and Don Opper. The music is by Mitchell Froom.
The basic storyline is that Hulce is a cartoonist either separated or divorced from his wife or ex-wife, Mastrantonio. A woman, Madsen, with whom he recently had a sex-mostly affair is found strangled and he is the prime suspect. Stanton and Doe are investigating the case. Opper is a thug involved in the murder. Ant is a friend of Hulce's. For those who might care, the movie is set around Hollywood.
What the movie tries to be is a stylish non-linear mystery. It certainly succeeds in being stylish, in fact to a fault, as an excessive amount of time is spent on very cold beautiful shots of places and things that have nothing to do with the story. It also succeeds in being non-linear as clues are suggested but not fleshed out until much much much later, when you've forgotten about them already, and details of Hulce's history and his involvement with Madsen are strewn throughout the movie completely out of sequence and without warning as to when those details occurred: the past, the far past or the present.
What it fails at is being a mystery. Things happen for about an hour with no rhyme or reason, then suddenly in the last half-hour, the plot seems to get going. Hulce does some detective work to clear himself but the biggest, most important clues he gets all come to him by unbelievable circumstances. For instance, one of the big clues is a business card that he finds in Opper's jacket pocket. How does he find it ? Well, you see, after Opper beat him up, he was so kind as to wrap his jacket around Hulce's shoulders.
I think most of the blame must go to those who set up the mood. With all the glass and steel and plastic and fluorescent lighting, you get to feeling so sick that you don't really care about your own life, let alone Hulce's. It's all kind of depressing but not in the same way as BLADE RUNNER. It's like being trapped in an LA yuppie singles bar that you can't escape from.
Also, a lot of the acting is downright bad. Not so much that people act wooden (though Doe certainly does--don't tell me it's part of his persona), it's that they act the wrong way nearly constantly. For instance, Hulce acts mildly irritated when he really should be acting thoroughly frightened. And Opper first acts cold and brutal and then without warning or reason changes to fumbling and incompetent. Stanton doesn't seem to be acting at all (I think someone forgot to tell him this wasn't a readthrough). Ant acts like an asshole, probably because both he and his character are (he manages to ruin the surrealists / fish light bulb joke). Mastrantonio is pretty good actually, though she should stop playing these roles in which her main job is to worry about what happens to other people. Madsen is good at her (rather small) role, playing the ice princess but then that doesn't really take a lot of talent.
Rating: -2 on -4 / +4
$1 / Cable on 1st view / 2nd view
2 on Sid & Nancy
(If you're wondering why I don't give it all around worst ratings, it's because for a while, the style is somewhat hypnotic. There are quite a few extremely well composed shots.)
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