Neo noir: Wild Things
Well it is neo noir. We may as well give them that. Otherwise you get into one of those stupid arguments like whether something really is art or really is poetry. But bad? I can't begin to tell you how bad this movie is. But, you know, it's bad in a sorta good-trashy way—if you were up at two AM and you couldn't sleep and your brain was so dead that only non-challenging trash would satisfy, you'd probably watch it wall the way to the end.
There is no narration but we do get the camera flâneur ...
Actually, let me start this another way. It isn't worth the deep analysis. I picked it for the series for two reasons: I'd never seen before (whereas I had seen all the other movies in this series so far) and it is number 4 on the Box Office Mojo list of top-grossing, neo-noir films. That, as we shall see, is a little less impressive than it might initially seem.
Back in 1981, Lawrence Kasdan surprised everyone by making a hit out of a movie called Body Heat. Wild Things made $30 million in 1998 but it cost $20 million to make. Body Heat, which comes in at #7 on the Box Office Mojo list, made $24 million in 1981. In constant dollars, that is about $42 million in 1998 dollars, the year Wild Things was released. And Body Heat was made for a lot less money; it didn't have a single big name star in it. (Although it had four actors who later became big-name stars: William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Ted Danson and Mickey Rourke.)
So the things is, Hollywood, as it often does, has tried to duplicate the Body Heat phenomenon ever since. Look up erotic thrillers and you'll see literally hundreds of mediocre imitations of which Wild Things is probably the best known.
One of the cool bits of trivia about Body Heat—it must be cool 'cause everyone mentions it—is that it was supposed to be set in New Jersey but had to be moved because of a strike. I mention that because if it hadn't been moved, Miami Vice probably would have been New Jersey Vice. Why? Because Hollywood has raided Body Heat for television and movie concepts ever since the movie was made. Let me give you an example:
Meanwhile, Wild Things features:
I'm not going to type the list twice: everything from 1 to 8 above is also in this movie.
I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I plan to swipe all or most of those elements myself someday. But it ain't enough to just put them all in the movie. There has to be some art about it and there isn't in Wild Things.
After Body Heat, Hollywood got in the habit of taking the elements from movie putting them into jar and shaking them up. Both Palmetto and this movie work like that. In typical Hollywood fashion, though, this one has been made on the theory that if one pill is good for you, the whole bottle will make you immortal. So if Ned Racine has sex with one hot woman whom he plans murder with in Body Heat, Sam Lombardo in Wild Things has sex with three hot partners (two women and one man) with whom he plans the murder. And if Body Heat has two surprise twists, well this movie has ... actually, there are so many I lost count. Far too many in any case. You stop caring long before the end.
Otherwise, they have all the elements right down to the white panties. These are worn by Denise Richards who spends a shocking amount of time in her underwear. And she does topless, which is a mistake because her breasts look real when she is wearing a bra but decidedly fake when she takes it off. She also does a scene in a bathing suit that is see through when it's wet.
That scene is at the high school pool because her character is supposed to be seventeen years old. Yeah, it's that kind of movie. You will be as relieved as I was to know she was actually 27 so that makes it alright.
I mean, it's not like they intentionally evoke Lolita or anything.
Uh oh.
They do evoke Lolita.
Oh well, at least they don't have any shots that really play up the notion of an adult male having sex with schoolgirls because that would be kinda like, what's the word, cheap exploitation of underage sex for gratuitous titillation.
They wouldn't for example, dress the underage girl up in little-girl shoes and socks.
Uh oh.
Oh well, at least they don't put one of the seventeen-year-old girls in a white shirt and pleated skirt that suggests a Catholic school uniform even though she goes to a public school that doesn't have uniforms and then have her have sex with an adult male.
Of course they do; they can't help themselves. (This film pulled this cheap exploitation trick one year before Britney Spears did it in case you are wondering. Maybe this is where her producers got the idea?)
Pedophiles must have loved this flick. If there is a way that this movie could have stooped any further, I can't think of it. It's a shockingly non-erotic experience for all that. It's no more erotic than any random episode of The OC.
The acting is television-show quality throughout. David Caruso's acting is lively and animated compared to what you see in this movie. The camera work and the art direction, however, are brilliant and I'll get to that later today with an "aesthetics of manliness" post.
Manliness lesson
Now, one of the themes I've been hitting on all these movies is that there usually is some insight into modern male sexuality embodied in neo noir. Well, there isn't much to say about this movie but I've come up with something appropriate to the film. (There is no limit to what I will do for you dear readers.)
At one point there was a shot of the two male leads in the shower together. The director cut it because the scene was "gratuitous". He did not feel the same way about several scenes in which the two female leads kiss and make out. Girl on girl action is essential to the plot, boy on boy action is gratuitous. That is our lesson for today.
An aside related to the above: I just found out that search engines that counts certain elements and if you have enough of them on your blog, and rate your blog as a "gay site". Google finds ten pages of likely posts for this site. (UPDATE January 28, 2012, I'm now up to 27 pages.) Who knew? I only know because one of my readers did the research before me and it showed up in my stats file. Someone out there, is trying to figure out if I'm gay. Thank you; it's an honour just to be nominated.
Well it is neo noir. We may as well give them that. Otherwise you get into one of those stupid arguments like whether something really is art or really is poetry. But bad? I can't begin to tell you how bad this movie is. But, you know, it's bad in a sorta good-trashy way—if you were up at two AM and you couldn't sleep and your brain was so dead that only non-challenging trash would satisfy, you'd probably watch it wall the way to the end.
There is no narration but we do get the camera flâneur ...
Actually, let me start this another way. It isn't worth the deep analysis. I picked it for the series for two reasons: I'd never seen before (whereas I had seen all the other movies in this series so far) and it is number 4 on the Box Office Mojo list of top-grossing, neo-noir films. That, as we shall see, is a little less impressive than it might initially seem.
Back in 1981, Lawrence Kasdan surprised everyone by making a hit out of a movie called Body Heat. Wild Things made $30 million in 1998 but it cost $20 million to make. Body Heat, which comes in at #7 on the Box Office Mojo list, made $24 million in 1981. In constant dollars, that is about $42 million in 1998 dollars, the year Wild Things was released. And Body Heat was made for a lot less money; it didn't have a single big name star in it. (Although it had four actors who later became big-name stars: William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Ted Danson and Mickey Rourke.)
So the things is, Hollywood, as it often does, has tried to duplicate the Body Heat phenomenon ever since. Look up erotic thrillers and you'll see literally hundreds of mediocre imitations of which Wild Things is probably the best known.
One of the cool bits of trivia about Body Heat—it must be cool 'cause everyone mentions it—is that it was supposed to be set in New Jersey but had to be moved because of a strike. I mention that because if it hadn't been moved, Miami Vice probably would have been New Jersey Vice. Why? Because Hollywood has raided Body Heat for television and movie concepts ever since the movie was made. Let me give you an example:
- Body Heat is set in a hot and steamy Florida town.
- There is a very rich community right beside a poorer community.
- It features a guy who wants to make it to the top but meanwhile is lazy and spends all his time seducing a series of women.
- He gets involved in a murder plot with a woman that involves them taking someone for a lot of money and running away to a hot and exotic land.
- There is a hot steamy scene in which the camera lingers on our hero removing a woman's sexy white panties.
- The movie makes repeated homage to Double Indemnity including, among other things, a moment which a detective says that having more people in the plot makes the crime harder to conceal. (The line is derived from one delivered by Edward G. Robinson in Double Indemnity.)
- After the murder there is some double crossing as one of the plotters tries to eliminate everyone who could incriminate him or her and suddenly, no one knows who can they trust anymore.
- It ends up with one person in a hot and exotic land with all the money.
Meanwhile, Wild Things features:
I'm not going to type the list twice: everything from 1 to 8 above is also in this movie.
I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I plan to swipe all or most of those elements myself someday. But it ain't enough to just put them all in the movie. There has to be some art about it and there isn't in Wild Things.
After Body Heat, Hollywood got in the habit of taking the elements from movie putting them into jar and shaking them up. Both Palmetto and this movie work like that. In typical Hollywood fashion, though, this one has been made on the theory that if one pill is good for you, the whole bottle will make you immortal. So if Ned Racine has sex with one hot woman whom he plans murder with in Body Heat, Sam Lombardo in Wild Things has sex with three hot partners (two women and one man) with whom he plans the murder. And if Body Heat has two surprise twists, well this movie has ... actually, there are so many I lost count. Far too many in any case. You stop caring long before the end.
Otherwise, they have all the elements right down to the white panties. These are worn by Denise Richards who spends a shocking amount of time in her underwear. And she does topless, which is a mistake because her breasts look real when she is wearing a bra but decidedly fake when she takes it off. She also does a scene in a bathing suit that is see through when it's wet.
That scene is at the high school pool because her character is supposed to be seventeen years old. Yeah, it's that kind of movie. You will be as relieved as I was to know she was actually 27 so that makes it alright.
I mean, it's not like they intentionally evoke Lolita or anything.
Uh oh.
They do evoke Lolita.
Oh well, at least they don't have any shots that really play up the notion of an adult male having sex with schoolgirls because that would be kinda like, what's the word, cheap exploitation of underage sex for gratuitous titillation.
They wouldn't for example, dress the underage girl up in little-girl shoes and socks.
Uh oh.
Oh well, at least they don't put one of the seventeen-year-old girls in a white shirt and pleated skirt that suggests a Catholic school uniform even though she goes to a public school that doesn't have uniforms and then have her have sex with an adult male.
Of course they do; they can't help themselves. (This film pulled this cheap exploitation trick one year before Britney Spears did it in case you are wondering. Maybe this is where her producers got the idea?)
Pedophiles must have loved this flick. If there is a way that this movie could have stooped any further, I can't think of it. It's a shockingly non-erotic experience for all that. It's no more erotic than any random episode of The OC.
The acting is television-show quality throughout. David Caruso's acting is lively and animated compared to what you see in this movie. The camera work and the art direction, however, are brilliant and I'll get to that later today with an "aesthetics of manliness" post.
Manliness lesson
Now, one of the themes I've been hitting on all these movies is that there usually is some insight into modern male sexuality embodied in neo noir. Well, there isn't much to say about this movie but I've come up with something appropriate to the film. (There is no limit to what I will do for you dear readers.)
At one point there was a shot of the two male leads in the shower together. The director cut it because the scene was "gratuitous". He did not feel the same way about several scenes in which the two female leads kiss and make out. Girl on girl action is essential to the plot, boy on boy action is gratuitous. That is our lesson for today.
An aside related to the above: I just found out that search engines that counts certain elements and if you have enough of them on your blog, and rate your blog as a "gay site". Google finds ten pages of likely posts for this site. (UPDATE January 28, 2012, I'm now up to 27 pages.) Who knew? I only know because one of my readers did the research before me and it showed up in my stats file. Someone out there, is trying to figure out if I'm gay. Thank you; it's an honour just to be nominated.
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