" Lake Placid " *
"I just have this feeling that everything is completely safe," says the local sheriff, late in LAKE PLACID. I don't think anyone in the film, or watching it, would disagree with him
This has got to be one of the worst creature flicks ever, because its creature, a giant crocodile, is so terribly lifeless. Timid, too: a character played by Oliver Platt (he's an, um, croc-spert) is swimming very slowly backward, away from his subject, the crocodile following closely, and never once is there an attack at the opportune time. Later, Bridget Fonda - forgive me, actual character names didn't stick - is engaged is some kind of underwater battle (and, BTW, when you finally do resurface, maybe be more out of breath so we can at least pretend you were down there that long) with the crocodile, as it languorously swings open its long jaws just at the potential victim's feet, but only tries for the kill once Fonda is safely behind a tree big enough only to shroud her tiny frame. Could she outswim the beast, when we've already seen it swiftly lunge ashore and drag both a cow and a bear into the water? Not likely. But, there's a trend: no actor with star billing is killed. Or, severely injured; not one of them. Only in the beginning, with a diver tagging beaver, and then with a town deputy, do deaths occur. Ok - I sound morbid; don't mean to, it's just that with something that moves as quickly as this crocodile does on land, to have it be so laidback and non-threatening the rest of the time, namely during confrontations with most of the cast, is boring. Earlier, the Platt character explains that freshwater crocs do not usually attack _in_ the water. So, what about the aforementioned diver? Or, Fonda's narrow escape?
Contradictions in logic aside, LAKE has a pleasant, sunny look, and some witty, insult-laden dialogue for Fonda. All of which is cute, while it lasts; you can literally feel the film run out of energy and resources and plot, and then all but evaporate from the screen. 100 minutes seems like 30, here, because there's nothing going on. And, every time our monster makes an appearance, the effect is that of a wet blanket thrown over a wet blanket. It moves too slow, but maybe that's because of it's age (150 years, we are told); plus, there was all that swimming from Asia. And, when it takes to land, it will thrash about, chomping every which direction, but will not make contact. How unbelievably dull.
Best line: hard to choose one more ridiculous than, "Don't throw heads at me!"
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews