The Cable Guy (Stiller, 1996): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.15pm
This "comedy" is part of the £1 for Prince Charles members season but there’s something more than comedy going on here. Something much darker ... highly recommended.
Time Out review:
A twisted and often nasty black comedy. When naive suburbanite Matthew Broderick
asks Jim Carrey's over-eager Cable Guy to give him a few extra channels for
free, he has no idea he's inviting the wired-up plugster into his life.
Newly separated from his girlfriend, Broderick is sucked into his
socially inept pal's deranged fantasy world, the result of a lonely
boyhood spent watching TV. Carrey's whirlwind comic energy is too
spontaneous and elusive to be contained by Lou Holtz Jr's initially
unsettling script. Also, Ben Stiller's erratic direction fails to establish a
consistent tone, so that obvious, crowd pleasing set-pieces alternate
with creepy, disturbing weirdness. Compare, for instance, Carrey's
typically berserk karaoke rendition of Jefferson Airplane's 'Somebody to
Love?' with the nightmarish sequence in a kitschy Arthurian theme
restaurant, where he and Broderick quaff ale and gnaw chicken before
fighting, virtually to the death, with swords, axes, maces and jousting
lances. Nevertheless, because it dares to expose the dark side of
Carrey's persona, and to take chances at this pivotal stage in his
meteoric career, Stiller's film ranks as an honourable failure.
Nigel Floyd
Here (and above) is the trailer.
No comments:
Post a Comment