December 14 - 21 , 1 9 9 5

UNDER THE HULA MOON

I should have been forewarned: director Jeff Celentano's last movie was called Dickwad. As for this one, not since Johnny Mnemonic has a film attempted to replicate a popular genre with such horrendous results. It's as if someone fed the plot lines of Wild at Heart, Pulp Fiction, and Raising Arizona into a computer, with a special command to provoke in an audience the ha-ha sound. The movie has all the elements of the postmodern romp but with none of the effects, like an elaborate illusion: a flame that won't burn, water that won't wet, comedy that won't make you laugh.

Even more worse than the movie's formulaic wackiness (it actually de-kitschifies kitsch, turning it back into a pumpkin) is the mindless brutality that sticks to the underside of the "plot" like shit to a shoe. I was deeply offended by the clumsy attempts to apply slapstick to Chris Penn's molestation of Emily Lloyd. Stephen Baldwin says that, at first, he didn't want to make this film. He really shouldn't have. At the Coolidge Corner.

-- Chris Wright