Lake Placid Chad'z rating: **1/2 (out of 4 = okay/average) 1999, R, 82 minutes [1 hour, 22 minutes] [horror] Starring: Bill Pullman (Game Warden Jack Wells), Bridget Fonda (Kelly Scott), Oliver Platt (Hector Cyr), Brendan Gleeson (Sheriff Hank Keogh); written by David E. Kelley; produced by David E. Kelley, Michael Pressman; directed by Steven Miner.
Seen July 18, 1999 at 5:20 p.m. at Crossgates Cinema 18 (Guilderland, NY), theater #15, with Shawn O'Shea for free using my Hoyts season pass. [Theater rating: ***1/2: very good picture and sound, okay seats].
Watching `Lake Placid' you get the feeling the entire film was written, produced, shot and edited in one day. It has a light, care-free attitude that it doesn't really want to be taken seriously (it better not) and that it's just what a bunch of big-shot Hollywood execs do on the weekend.
Let's look at the facts here - we've got a bunch of semi-big actors (big enough names for people to recognize, but small enough not to demand too much money) in a relatively low-budget, small-scale flick created and produced by trendy television and modern b-movie guys. You can tell they couldn't possibly expect us to take this seriously by releasing in the middle of a cut-throat summer movie season filled with mega-budget, blockbuster special effects and superstars. The running time is just barely over an hour... I guess they expect us to go see it while we wait for the next `Phantom Menace' showing.
Anyways, I'm not going to rip this film to shreds as many other critics have done. In fact, for a film that doesn't seem to have much effort put into it, it's actually not that bad!
I can't count how many times I and other critics have said the key to pulling off a horror flick as simple as man vs. beast, ghoul, monster, etc. is to keep the atmosphere lighthearted and dialogue witty. Once they stray into the so-fake-it's-totally-unrealistic-and-cheesy territory they'll usually lose us. Well, `Lake Placid' does dabble in that area both for campy humor and theme, but also to seriously push the story along.
It's about four characters and their hunt for a killer crocodile in a secluded lake off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean in Maine. It's a calm lake with no waves and the water is as black as night.
`They wanted to name it Lake Placid, but they found out it was already taken,' says the local yokel sheriff, Hank Keogh (Gleeson) to New York paleontologist Kelley Scott (Fonda), who is sent up to the lake-with-no-name after a rare reptilian tooth is found in the body of a diver whose legs were bitten off by a mysterious creature in the opening scene.
That statement alone probably sounds pretty campy right? Well, it gets better (or worse), turns out Kelley agrees to go out into the wilderness just to get away from her boss who has just dumped her for her best friend. Not surprisingly, Kelley is a stuck-up bitch who can't stand nature and freaks out every time something involves hands-on work. Every horror movie has at least one screaming woman in it and there's plenty for Kelley to scream at here, such as when Keogh finds the head of a moose in the lake or during many scenes whereby the crew is out hunting for the monster and it suddenly sneaks up on them.
The other `crew' members are local Game Warden Jack Wells (Pullman) and international crocodile enthusiast Hector Cyr (Platt). These characters are exactly what you'd expect: Wells takes the situation seriously and acts like a dorky 8th grade boy calling Kelley `ma'am' every 10 seconds, and Cyr is really a nutcase who practically worships crocs and points out that they have been worshipped and feared by ancient civilizations and religions around the world. He has a slew of high-tech equipment which he failingly tries to convince Keogh and Wells will be able to subdue the croc enough for him to have it transported to safe captivity.
How did a crocodile end up in a lake in New England? The filmmakers never answer that question, only through lame one-liners or vague, unfounded, general rationalizations - the kind only eccentric movie characters can get away with saying (`Someone in Hong Kong probably flushed him down the toilet' - ugh!).
There isn't much to say about the plot other than the obvious - it's about a bunch of people trying to hunt down a killer crocodile while being scared out of their minds. And yessirebob all the horror cliches abound - the noise in the bushes that just turns out to be one of the other characters, the journey to the beast's home despite all common sense, the sex jokes and a mysterious sub-plot that doesn't have any significance until the end.
That sub-plot, about an old woman living in a cabin on the lake is really weird. Betty White co-stars as this woman who has a surprisingly foul mouth and makes a lot of really funny, albeit shocking remarks. This element single-handedly saves the film from being a complete waste of time and keeps the atmosphere light.
The ending itself is actually kind of suspenseful, much more thrilling than horrifying. There's even a surprise twist and the final shot is quite funny.
I have a feeling everything surrounding `Lake Placid' will also have that feeling of little-effort-but-in-good-spirits. Critics probably won't like it, but they shouldn't waste their time and energy bashing it either since it's one of the few non-blockbuster movies that is actually critic proof. People are going to see this thinking it's either scary or campy fun, but the truth is, it has only a little of both and too much of nothing else.
(7/21/99)
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