MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: It is unusual to find a film of quality and style being released outside the summer fluff season. Generally pretty good special effects from ILM are the real star of this very lightweight sci-fi (as opposed to science fiction) adventure. Rating: high 0 (-4 to +4).
Stories of people with the ability to make themselves invisible (and the power this gives them) go back to ancient Greece. Perseus had a cap of invisibility, Gyges made himself king with a ring of invisibility, H. G. Wells questioned just how powerful a totally transparent man could be in THE INVISIBLE MAN. (Wells, incidentally, recognized that a totally invisible eye would not focus and hence would be blind. The serum in his novel leaves the lenses of the eye intact and Wells says, questionably, that his invisible man just has to take care that the lenses of his eyes are not seen.)
Early silent films would occasionally have people turn invisible, usually for comic visual effect. 1933 brought Universal's adaptation of Wells's novel and a whole series with it using the special effects of Arthur Edelson. Since then there have been only occasional films with invisible people. Mexico made a series of "Invisible Man" films; there have been two television series claiming to be based on the Wells. Films like THE INVISIBLE BOY, THE AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN, and THE INVISIBLE DR. MABUSE have used the gimmick. The 1970s television series with David McCallum was an early application of bluescreen for the effect. The latest film version is MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN based on the novel by H. F. Saint and directed by John Carpenter.
Like most of the people Chevy Chase plays, Nick Holloway is in the wrong place at the wrong time. In Nick's case the wrong place is Magnescopics, a high-tech research lab. The wrong time is when their fusion experiment goes awry. (Computer experts beware. You will NOT like the scene that shows how the experiment went wrong. VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA fans might like it, though.) Through some freak accident, large portions of the building are rendered invisible. So is Nick. What is the most pedestrian and predictable plot that could come out of this beginning. Yup! You got it. Sam Neill plays the villainous CIA operative who wants to get hold of Nick and use him as a weapon. Can one man with the power of invisibility outwit a CIA assassin who has a whole brigade of men in suits and sunglasses with guns? The suspense is terrible and the writing not much better. Of course, this is a part made for Chevy Chase since it involves a lot of falling down and knocking into things. One of the things he bumps into is Alice Munro (played by Darryl Hannah) who does not really take much of an active part in the story. She is there more to react and to give the audience someone attractive to look at. They certainly don't have Chase to look at.
Industrial Light and Magic no doubt was anxious to see what their technology could add to Edelson's invention for the 1933 film. Edelson's approach was to put an actor in a black suit so that nothing showed, then put visible pieces of clothing on the actor and film it against a black background. The negative would then be nearly transparent except for the visible clothing. Superimposing this on a scene of a room and then printing the result would give a look of empty clothing. Bluescreen--ILM's specialty--is a refinement of this process using video technology. ILM's imagination shows with some new invisibility effects, the nicest being a mask of facepaint visible from front and back.
The special effects are about the only thing to see this film for. Well, ..., perhaps there is a little original playing with the concept of invisibility, but not enough to make it worthwhile. I give this film a high 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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