Excess Baggage (1997)
Seen on 10 September 1997 for $0 at the SONY 19th Street
Every now and then there is a movie that absolutely astounds you, that makes you think and wonder... how and why it every got made. Clearly, there must be a special place in hell for the writers and producers of the aptly named Excess Baggage.
This is possibly one of the worst movies I have ever witnessed. At one point I was so bored I actually started counting loose singles and coins in my back pocket. But I remained hopeful that perhaps Alicia Silverstone (who plays the whiney Emily Hope) wou ld shine like she did in Clueless. Well, it was a cloudy day for Alicia.
The film features the "unlikely romance" (code words for unbelievably stupid) of rich, spoiled Emily, who fakes her own kidnapping and locks herself in her BMW's trunk, and Vincent (Benicio Del Toro), the car thief who steals her car with her in it. In t he course of the following two days, he tries to dump her, she persists in staying with him, and they are pursued by Vincent's yuppie partner (Harry Connick Jr.), some criminals (one played by the otherwise wonderful Nicholas Turturro), and Emily's "uncle " Ray (the typecast, unhealthy looking Christopher Walken).
Overall, for a nonstop rollicking chase movie, there are many torturously slow moments, which get interrupted by "cool videolike sequences" and some really dreadful dialogue like this:
Emily: My shirt is stained. My pen exploded.
Vincent: They have postcards in the room. You can write on them.
It is just so hard to believe someone actually wrote this crap. The other major liability is the love interest: Benicio Del Toro, which roughly translated means "good bull." He is barely comprehensible, which might turn on some pre-teens out there, but he has gigantic carry-on bags under his eyes. He looks like a heroin addict. I am not sure who in casting owed someone a favor, but that's one possible explanation for making him the romantic lead. He is so bad, he makes Adrian Zmed look like Lawrence Olivier.
Luckily, I paid zero dollars to see this movie, but I still feel like someone owes me something. Don't see it, don't rent it; just watch it when you're truly bored and have nothing better to do than watch USA's *Up All Night*.
Trashy Bonus: Excess Baggage features not one but two special homophobic comments: Emily refers to Greg as Vincent's "faggot boyfriend" and Ray later tells Emily that he doesn't want her surrounded in jail by "sociopathic lesbians."
---------------- Copyright (c) 1997, Seth J. Bookey, New York, NY 10021, sethbook@panix.com.
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