PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com
Krippendorf's Tribe. A movie about a guy who lies about stuff to get free money. It sounds like the plot for the new Pauly Shore movie (and who decided to stop letting him make films?). Unfortunately, it's the latest vehicle for Richard Dreyfuss (Mr. Holland's Opus), who either doesn't read his scripts anymore or saw Ace Ventura 2: When Nature Calls…and really really liked it.
Dreyfuss stars as James Krippendorf, a chaotic unkempt archeology professor at an unnamed university. As the film opens, we finds James nodding off while watching home videos of a New Guinea trip that he took with his wife and children. It seems that he and his wife, who was also an archeology professor, were in search of a `lost tribe' that has never had contact with outsiders. I remember reading about a tribe like this in the seventh grade, and I was just as frigging bored then, too.
James wakes up from his flashback to a filthy cluttered home he shares with his three kids. Apparently, his wife has died and James has used the grant money they had earned to keep the family afloat financially. Talk about a great role model for all of those current (and future) single fathers out there.
Things begin to spin out of control when Veronica (Elfman, Dharma & Greg), an adoring former student who is now a new professor at the university, pops in to remind James about his big lecture on the lost tribe. Big lecture! Oh, no. James has forgotten all about it and is completely unprepared. The humanity of it all!
Now, your average person in this situation might fib a little bit to get out of a jam and hope that the problem just goes away, but not our James. He not only confirms his contact with the lost tribe, but also makes up facts that are so astounding that he effectively turns the archeological community on its collective ear.
Igniting the public's interest with his marvelous story, James is pressured to produce video of the tribe. Again, the average person would probably be able to quickly sidestep this issue, but not our James. He actually decorates his back yard and dresses his kids up to film a faux version of his fantasy tribe. The tape generates more excitement and James must make more phony tapes to quell the teaming masses.
The ensuing scenes are predictable and, for the most part, boring. James does get to dry hump his Father-in-law (Tom Poston, Newhart) while dressed as the leader of the tribe. Oh, yeah, and he somehow cons a drunken Veronica into face paint and shags her rotten while filming the entire event as a tribal mating ritual. And there is a scene at the end when James and Veronica have to keep switching in and out of the tribesman costume that is very reminiscent of The Brady Bunch Halloween episode where Peter has two dates and one thinks he's Frankenstein and the other thinks that…oh, just forget it.
Dreyfuss tries to be hilariously over-the-top (as in Jim Carrey) and Elfman seems wasted in an underdeveloped role. The kids, led by Natasha Lyonne (Everyone Says I Love You), are a predictable bunch: the eldest is the mother figure, the middle one wants a dog and the youngest hasn't spoken since Mom died. And we never find out why she died either. I expected more from Todd Holland, who also directs the outstanding HBO series, The Larry Sanders Show.
The truly amazing feat is that these archaeological experts are so easily duped. James would have needed an eight-camera shoot to pull off the video that he presented to them. They somehow don't seem to grasp the idea of film editing. Wrap that up with an ending so implausible that it actually gave me diarrhea, and you've got yourself one fine picture.
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