LARGER THAN LIFE
A film review by Michael John Legeros
Copyright 1996 Michael John Legeros
(U/A)
Directed by Howard Franklin
Written by Roy Blount Jr., from the story by Pen Densham and Garry
Williams
Cast Bill Murray, Tai, Janeane Garofalo, Matthew McConaughey,
Linda Fiorentino, Anita Gillette, Pat Hingle, Lois Smith
MPAA Rating "PG"
Running Time 93 minutes
Reviewed at Waverly Place, Cary, NC (02NOV96)
==
LARGER THAN LIFE, the comedy that puts Bill Murray on the road with an elephant (!), almost warranted a walk-out, but not because this particular pachyderm played in the odious OPERATION DUMBO DROP. Rather, it was the number of children in attendance that left my companion and I unable to relax in our seats. (Upon entering the theater, Waverly Place in Cary, we were dismayed to discover bare walls. Without stereo sound to drown out the inevitable noise of an underage audience, the situation was rapidly approaching lose- lose. Did I mention the dried vomit on the seat in front of us?) Happily, the brats were well-behaved, though I doubt that any of them appreciated Bill Murray's character of a smarmy motivational speaker. (His motto, obviously modeled after multiplex managers, is "get over it.") They came to see an elephant and, oh, what an elephant it was! Vera, as she's called in the movie, can bow and play dead and do almost any trick, except perform a rewrite on Roy Blount Jr.'s clearly understocked script. In fact, no human that Mr. Motivation meets on his cross-country trip to California-- to sell Vera to either a zoo-keeper (Janeane Garofalo) or an animal trainer (Linda Fiorentino)-- is particularly funny, not even the manic trucker Tip played by an unrecognizable Matthew McConaughey. Critters watching critters notwithstanding, LARGER THAN LIFE is best enjoyed as another of Murray's feature-length slow burns. And stay awake for the movie's one great scene, when Murray tries to drive a big rig. Hilarious.
Grade: C+
--
Mike Legeros - Raleigh, NC, USA, Earth
legeros@pagesz.net (h) - legeros@unx.sas.com (w)
Visit me in MOVIE HELL
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