Mousey (1974)
Grade: 81
"Mousey" is a humble and obscure made-for-TV movie, but it is surprisingly tough. Most TV movies are targeted to women, and usually feature a heroic woman who has to overcome obstacles put in her path by a controlling man or a jealous woman. "Mousey" is nothing like that formula, and is an interesting and intense character study of a disturbed and obsessed man.
The film stars Kirk Douglas, a veteran high school biology teacher who has been stuck with the nickname Mousey by his students. His wife has recently left him, also taking her preteen son. Douglas begins to stalk his ex-wife. He begins to murder strangers, having the disturbed logic that this will somehow impress his wife.
Jean Seberg and John Vernon co-star. It would be the last American production for Seberg.
Douglas' character loves his ex-wife and her son, but he loves them as possessions, not as individuals. He believed that his marriage was content, while his ex-wife thought it was empty. Mousey reacts to the loss of his family as if it were a loss of his property, with him having the "right" to recover that property.
There is a lot of tension in the film, mostly generated by Mousey's underlying pathos. Douglas gives an excellent performance, never softening his vengeful character except for tenderness to his lost adopted son. The lower budget is obvious only in the hokey soundtrack.
"Mousey" shows that a film, even a made-for-TV movie, can be successful in focusing completely on a single character, as long as that character is deserving of such study.
http://members.tripod.com/~Brian_Koller/movies.html
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