HUMAN NATURE (2001) / ***
Directed by Michel Gondry. Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman. Starring Patricia Arquette, Rhys Ifans, Tim Robbins. Running time: 96 minutes. Rated AA for nude scenes and controversial subject matter by the MFCB. Reviewed on October 12th, 2002.
By SHANNON PATRICK SULLIVAN
Synopsis: Lila (Arquette) is a woman cursed with a condition which causes her body to be covered in hair. Nathan (Robbins) is her boyfriend, a scientist who is ignorant of Lila's problem (she shaves, often) and who is so neurotically mannered that he's trained mice to eat at the table. Puff (Ifans) is a man raised as a monkey, who one day becomes Nathan's newest experiment.
Review: It will probably come as little surprise that the mad mind behind the script for "Human Nature" is Charlie Kaufman, who also wrote "Being John Malkovich". Both films aim for the same level of inspired absurdity, and although "Human Nature" falls short of "Malkovich", it's still quite a ride -- one which, with the emphasis firmly on premise rather than plot, wisely wraps up just as it's about to lose our interest. Kaufman's goal here is to explore the fine line between man and beast. On the one hand, we have Puff, the man raised as a monkey, so horny that even multiple shocks from an electrified collar fail to stop his chronic masturbation or his insistence on humping every female biped he meets. Ifans is hilarious, displaying a superb range of physical comedy (his facial expressions are simply riotous) and lending Puff's lines a classic mix of intelligence both primal and advanced. On the other hand, there's the ill-fated Nathan, who acts out of the pretense of being an obsessively mannered man of knowledge, but is really just as inept as Puff at controlling the urges of his loins. Caught in the middle is Lila, who serves as both a visual and a metaphorical link between man and animal. Unfortunately, Lila's comic potential is quickly exhausted, and though Arquette tries gamely, she ends up playing third fiddle to Puff and Nathan.
Copyright © 2002 Shannon Patrick Sullivan. Archived at The Popcorn Gallery, http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sps/movies.html
========== X-RAMR-ID: 33109 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 796471 X-RT-TitleID: 1113402 X-RT-SourceID: 886 X-RT-AuthorID: 1699 X-RT-RatingText: 3/4
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