EXCESS BAGGAGE
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1997 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
Ask the typical moviegoer about a film, and what you will be told about are the stars and the plot. With few exceptions, the director is never mentioned. And the writers are totally ignored.
EXCESS BAGGAGE can serve as an object lesson in the importance of an intelligent script and a director with a sense of vision. Certainly Columbia Pictures must have been impressed with the deal they were offered by the producers. For stars the picture was to have the talented Alicia Silverstone and Christopher Walken, and the setup for the story showed great promise.
The resulting film, however, leaves much to be desired. Screenwriters Max D. Adams, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais fashion the outline of their characters but never bother to fill them in. The dialog is as sparse as it is meaningless, making the movie seem like a partially finished body of work that was rushed into production before it was completed.
Director Marco Brambilla, whose only other film was DEMOLITION MAN, crafts a story without context or compass. The film appears to be a dark comedy, but dark comedies have impressive atmospherics and are, shall we say, funny. This remarkably humorless movie has a laugh count of one -- an unprintable line of Silverstone's that occurs 45 minutes into the film. Jean-Yves Escoffier's pedestrian cinematography has no discernible look to it, rendering it as uninviting as the soliloquies of the actors.
The story has a propitious beginning. "All I ever wanted was a father who loved me," bemoans a melancholy young woman. "Someone to protect me. Someone to guide me through life. But it was never about the money." The cynical young woman, ironically named Emily Hope, is played without energy or passion by Alicia Silverstone. Silverstone brings nothing to the role and rarely rises above her poorly written part. Her character, like all of the characters in the story, is unsympathetically drawn. The movie is populated by people who are more walking enigmas than flesh-and-blood human beings. If an unexpected tornado had killed all of the characters, none of them would have been worth mourning.
Emily has kidnapped herself and gotten her father to pay a million dollars in ransom. At the start of the story she puts herself into the trunk of her car, but before the police can rescue her, a car thief named Vincent Roche steals it.
This sounds better than it is due to the director's inability to stage compelling scenes. The actors drift slowly through the props looking disinterested and confused. Sometimes they speak. Rarely is what they say worth hearing, so perhaps the paucity of lines is a blessing in disguise.
Benicio Del Toro, as the thief, sleepwalks through most of the picture, waking periodically to mumble some incomprehensible lines. Only the acting by Jack Thompson, as Emily's father, is worse. Thompson seems to be on strike and staging a work-to-rules protest. He will speak the lines written, but he will not show one scintilla of emotion.
When Christopher Walken shows up as Emily's Uncle Ray, the film briefly looks promising again, since Walken is the master of the creepy. The director manages to confuse Walken too. He wanders the set in the same zombie-like state as the rest of the cast. The only differences is that he looks incredibly sad. You would be too if you were stuck in this movie.
When the inevitable conclusion finally comes, it is not clear what the director of this sleep-inducing picture had intended to accomplish. His slightly mean-spirited film wasn't funny, gave no message and touched no emotional nerves. I left as confused as the actors.
EXCESS BAGGAGE runs 1:41. It is rated PG-13 for violence, drinking, and sexual dialog. The film would be fine for teenagers and those a bit younger. I do not recommend the picture, and I give it a generous * 1/2.
**** = A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = Totally and painfully unbearable picture.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: September 5, 1997
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
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