LAKE PLACID A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 1999 David N. Butterworth
*** (out of ****)
The first preview for "Lake Placid," cleverly edited so that you weren't exactly sure what kind of large creature was terrorizing a wonderful cast of Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda, Oliver Platt, and Brendan Gleeson, gave me reasonably high hopes that this might be one of the summer's better creature features. But soon the print ads were ablaze with words like "funny" and "witty," words that made me nervous.
As it turns out, "Lake Placid" works much better as a comedy than it does a horror flick, and that's the biggest surprise here. In fact, it's often extremely funny, and credit has to go to writer David E. Kelley (creator of "Ally McBeal"), director Steve Miner (who's come a long way since cutting his teeth on a couple of early--and very unfunny--"Friday the 13th" movies), and that afore-mentioned foursome of terrifically able performers. I've said it twice now but I'll say it again: this is a *very* nicely cast movie.
Although all four play stereotypical characters, the acting is at such a level that each of the archetypes work.
Gleeson, the least familiar of the four (he was in the little-seen indie hit "I Went Down" and, more recently, in John Boorman's "The General"), is first on the scene, chaperoning a beaver-tagging diver in a Maine lake. His Sheriff Keough is sensitive to sarcasm and a little bit slow on the uptake. Anyway, something attacks the lone swimmer and Gleeson's character winds up pulling him into the boat and finding him half the man he used to be. Gross-out scene #1.
They call in Jack Wells from Fish and Game (Pullman) and he's soon joined by big city paleontologist Kelly Scott (Fonda), who doesn't want to be there. Kelly is an Emily Post-type who sprays Raid about her person and is shocked to hear that there aren't any toilets. Jack doesn't want her there either so you know they'll wind up sharing a tent and, perhaps, a toothy encounter or two.
Finally, expert tracker/millionaire Hector Cyr (Platt) shows up--and *nobody* wants him there--but he suspects they're dealing with a 30-foot migratory crocodile and he knows a thing or two about catching them. Not soon after, something tips over their boat and it's gross-out scene #2. That's pretty much it for the gross-out scenes, unless you count a severed head and an amputated toe, each crawling with worms. The latter elicits a dialogue that best exemplifies the kind of humor found in this movie. "Is this your deputy?" asks Hector, offering the detached appendage to Sheriff Keough. "He was taller..." gulps Keough with a delightful deadpan. Platt is hysterical, with Gleeson ever his match.
Turns out it *is* a croc ('odile, that is), and it's pretty convincing looking in the water. However, Stan Winston ("Jurassic Park") must have worked on this film during his lunch break, because the larger-than-life reptile is not very realistic once it gets up on land, and two shock scenes of the beast attacking on terra firma are quite obviously computer generated.
Fortunately, there's humor to spare in a film that doesn't even pretend to be another "Jaws" (that dishonor goes to Renny Harlin's "Deep Blue Sea," due out at the end of the month). No, "Lake Placid" is a different fish altogether. It's got it's scary moments, that's for sure. And it's got a few gory scenes. But best of all it's got Pullman, Fonda, Platt, and Gleeson and it's very, very funny.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@dca.net
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