Lost tribe discovered in the burbs
Krippendorf's Tribe A Film Review By Michael Redman Copyright 1998 By Michael Redman
**1/2 (out of ****)
Just when we think that we've evolved culturally from our tribal cousins, we're reminded that the trappings of our customs are just overlays on primitive rituals. The universality of humanity hasn't changed much in thousands of years. Lucky for James Krippendorf.
Anthropology professor Krippendorf (Richard Dreyfuss) has been in New Guinea researching a lost tribe for two years. At least he was supposed to have been. After his wife died, he spent that time - and the $100,000 grant money - lying around his house. Now he has to give a presentation documenting his findings and he has nothing.
At the lecture to reveal all the strange mysteries he has supposedly discovered, Krippendorf looks at his speech notes which consist of blank pages and comes up with what he thinks is a brilliant scam. Inventing the Shelmikedmu (named after the first few letters of each of his children) people on the spot, he talks about the uniqueness of the tribe. The family unit of this culture consists of single fathers. He bases his extemporaneous talk on his own family's interactions.
The ruse works well until the Shelmikedmu capture the imagination of academia and the pop anthropology crowd. Krippendorf becomes an over-night celebrity, sought after by high society and the press. He is forced to invent more and more about the tribe and to produce his filmed documentaries.
Enlisting the help of his kids, Shelly (Natasha Lyonne), Mikey (Gregory Smith) and Edmund (Carl Michael Lindner), he dresses them up as tribesmen and throws together a New Guinea scene in his back yard complete with pigs and huts. At first the children are reluctant to co-operate. Their relationship with their father has gone down the tubes since their mother died. Young Edmund hasn't spoken a word to dad in two years. Then they get into it and the family begins to pull together for the first time since the tragedy.
Krippendorf is pushed towards the limelight by fellow anthropologist Veronica Micelli (Jenna Elfman from television's "Dharma And Greg"). Dragged kicking and screaming before the television cameras, he embellishes his lie with "facts" and numerous films.
Not everyone is fooled though. Suspicious professor Ruth Allen (Lily Tomlin) believes something is amiss and sets out to prove that the Shelmikedmu don't exist.
There are some truly hilarious bits in the film. When Mikey constructs a Shelmikedmu set for his school pageant, the movie works well. Pulling a miniature grass hut onto a stage, he tells of a ritual where the young virgin is blessed with pig urine during the time of her first menses. As the parents storm the stage, his classmate screams that she's not leaving the hut until she is purified.
There are other scenes that are just as funny. During a lecture, Krippendorf describes the early morning rituals of the teenage Shelmikedmu girl. As he talks about how she goes to a small room near the sleeping area to an altar and douses herself with potions and tonics, the film shows Shelly standing before the bathroom mirror putting on her make-up.
Where the movie runs into problems is its inability to focus on a target audience. It shuffles back and forth from being a smart comedy to bland Disneyesque pap. We get scenes with decidedly adult situations. He is asked by a woman if he only finds her attractive because she is holding his penis. He and Veronica get drunk, dress in Shelmikedmu garb and jump into bed while he secretly films the "mating ritual". Then there are scenes where the kids come to the rescue as Shelly drives a car for the first time narrowly avoiding slapstick accidents.
Richard Dreyfuss is always entertaining in his roles. Whether he's the fixated alien-searcher from "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" or the inventive Krippendorf, there's something about him that makes you want to invite him over for dinner. His friendliness and ability to think on his feet are refreshing.
Elfman is an odd one. Sometimes she is so goofy that you want to cringe. At other times she has a lanky somewhat gawky energetic appeal. Whatever it is, it's difficult to take your eyes off her. She holds her own on the screen and just needs to figure out exactly what her own actually is.
Lily Tomlin is one of the most gifted comedians around, but here she is mostly wasted. Not given much to do, she only shines in a few scenes.
The kids are...well, they're kids. Cute and occasionally engaging, the actors do a credible job in their parts, but could have been replaced by any number of other child actors and the film would have been unchanged.
Director Todd Holland ("The Larry Sanders Show") would have done better to have jettisoned the child audience and gone for a comedy more on the edge. The Shelmikedmu with their invented culture pulled together from authentic New Guinea artifacts and rituals and stapled onto items from Pier One held more promise than we got.
(Michael Redman has written this column for more years than he can remember and is currently attempting to recuperate from the Wild Raccoons Party Mardi. If you email him at Redman@bvoice.com, please do so quietly.)
[This appeared in the 2/26/98 "Bloomington Voice", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be contacted at redman@bvoice.com]
-- mailto:redman@bvoice.com This week's film review at http://www.bvoice.com/ Film reviews archive at http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Michael%20Redman
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