http://www.speakers-podium.com/susangranger.
Susan Granger's review of "SCREWED" (Universal Pictures)
"Screwed" sneaked into our local theaters without advance screenings for critics - and screwed is how you'll feel if you inadvertently pay at the ticket counter. Stand-up comic Norm Macdonald plays Willard Fillmore, a mild-mannered servant who works for nasty Virginia Crock, a wealthy Pittsburgh bakery owner played by Elaine Stritch. Understandably bitter - since he has to scrub her dentures along with her toilets and cars - and egged on by his best buddy, Dave Chappelle, he decides to kidnap her beloved, yappy, mean-tempered lap dog for $1 million ransom and flee to the Caribbean. But, of course, their contrived, chaotic plan backfires. None of this is funny - particularly Danny DeVito as a creepy, degenerate coroner. And Norm Macdonald is amazingly inept; he cannot act - period. Written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski before "Ed Wood," "The People vs. Larry Flynt," and "Man on the Moon," it serves as their directorial debut. Perhaps that's understandable since they also collaborated on the sloppy scripting of "Problem Child." On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Screwed" is a wretched, idiotic 1. Hard to believe, but it's worse than "Battlefield Earth."
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