THE LAST SUPPER
A film review by Michael John Legeros
Copyright 1996 Michael John Legeros
(Sony)
Directed by Stacy Title
Written by Dan Rosen
Cast Cameron Diaz, Courtney B. Vance, Annabeth Gish, Jonathan
Penner, Ron Eldard, Nora Dunn, Ron Perlman
MPAA Rating "R" (presumably for profanity and violence)
Running Time 93 minutes
Reviewed at The Rialto, Raleigh, NC (1JUN96)
==
Five liberals invite various right-wing extremists over for Sunday dinner and death. That's the premise of this heavy-handed black comedy from up-and-coming director Stacy Title. The liberals-- grad student housemates, of course-- are played by a quintet of appealing young actors. Cameron Diaz, Annabeth Gish, Courtney B. Vance, Jonathan Penner, and Ron Eldard are an enjoyable ensemble, until their characters become too smart-alecky for their own good. The roles of the victims-- one per meal-- are relegated to (mostly) star cameos. Look for Bill Paxton as a racist redneck, Charles Durning as a homophobic priest, and so on. Paxton, as the first addition to their tomato patch, makes the strongest impression of the lot. However, by the time we get to Jason Alexander's brief appearance as a meat-eating anti-environmentalist, the joke has become extinct. THE LAST SUPPER isn't nearly as funny as the set- up suggests. The characters all but bludgeon the audience with their extreme political viewpoints. Comedy has no room to breathe and, by the turnabout-is-fair-play end, the heavy-handed narrative makes the final transition from unbearable to just plain boring. For this, talk radio exists.
Grade: C-
--
Mike Legeros - Raleigh, NC
legeros@nando.net (h) - legeros@unx.sas.com (w)
Visit me in MOVIE HELL
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