Drowning Mona and Whatever it Takes 0 Stars (Out of 4) and 0 Stars (Out of 4) Reviewed by Mac VerStandig critic@moviereviews.org http://www.moviereviews.org March 5, 2000 USA Release Date of Drowning Mona - March 3, 2000 USA Release Date of Whatever it Takes - March 24, 2000
--- A copy of this review can be found at http://www.moviereviews.org/drowning_mona_and_whatever_it_takes.htm ---
Several nights ago I was forced to make a decision between attending a screening of a) Drowning Mona or b) Whatever it Takes. My choice wouldn't make much difference as I was destined to view both, so I nonchalantly chose b. In retrospect, I should have opted for c) a warm bath and a good night's sleep.
Drowning Mona, the third pathetic excuse for a movie from Destination Films (Bats and Eye of the Beholder), has a very-much recognizable cast that you expect to deftly guide it through what sounds like a semi-intriguing plot. Whatever It Takes, comparatively, comes from the veteran Columbia pictures and features a bunch of no-names in a very-much tired plot.
Danny DeVito hunts down the murderer of Verplank, New York's town shrew in Mona while Shane West seeks a prom date at Gilmore High in Whatever it Takes. It has been a while since a who-didn't-do-it has come along, so Mona certainly had the potential to be refreshingly amusing. Unfortunately, as the list of Fargonian characters piles up, it becomes increasingly apparent that the film's payoff cannot make sense as not a single member of the all-inclusive suspect list has the intellectual capacity to execute a murder. I dare even say that the only people dumber than the citizens of Verplank are the graduating class of Gilmore High. The characters in Whatever it Takes are so flagrantly single-dimensional that a quasi-Pleasantville feeling is created.
Insuring that Drowning Mona dies a worst death than the one described in its title are Danny DeVito, Casey Affleck, Bette Midler and Neve Campbell. DeVito likely won't suffer too badly from picking this film as he can still be seen in the extraordinary Man on the Moon and has an extremely respectable career to overshadow this work. Midler, on the other hand, is fresh off of Isn't She Great (which isn't) and needs to take a serious look at the current state of her career. It has been nearly 10 years since the landmark in her vitae when she bid Carson goodbye and although she continues to do acclaimed live theatre, her film career seems to have nose-dived since that Memorial Day weekend. As for Affleck and Campbell, they are both newcomers who will have to fight to erase memories of Mona, but given their talent they will likely succeed.
Whatever it Takes features Shane West and Marla Sokoloff as the resident geeks who attempt to cross-date with the two most popular kids in school, played by James Franco and Jodi Lyn O'Keefe. Sokoloff, West and Franco will all likely be destroyed by this play-it-by-the-convenient-cliché production. As for O'Keefe, the only actor with any experience to speak of (except for the always cute Julia Sweeney in a supporting role), she will likely come away stereotyped as the teenage bitch until she can no longer stop playing a teenager, at which point the only line she'll have to remember is "Would you like fries with that?"
For Mona, the kiss of death comes in a mid-film knife-throwing contest when the tempestuous character is humanized. The second you feel remotely bad for the deceased, the film goes from being really awful to really really awful. For Whatever it Takes, the unoriginal plot mixed with the apparent inability to land a singly joke doom the production for expulsion from the ranks of decent cinema.
Forget a hot bath and good night's sleep. I would have rather bathed in an Alaskan lake and spent a the night with the Adams Family than suffered through either of these movies!
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