Dumb and dumberer

Noel Vera

You wonder why they ever made a sequel to "American Psycho," Mary
Harron's screen adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis' infamous novel--a
fairly witty (a good thing) if drastically watered down (not such a
good thing, at least to me) film of a determinedly mediocre novel
(four hundred pages of minutely described clothes, designer brands
and restaurants fashionable in the '80s; endless torture sequences
copied straight out of de Sade (and possibly, Philip Jose Farmer);
and (most horrifying of all) lengthy appreciations of Phil Collins,
Huey Lewis and the News, and Whitney Huston).

True the picture did earn favorable reviews (mostly praising
Christian Bale's effectively reptilian interpretation of the book's
hero, Patrick Bateman), and did do brisk business (mainly on the
basis of the book's scandalous reputation); but if the filmmakers
wanted to cash in on whatever "Psycho" craze they somehow saw
pervading the air at the time of the first film's release, why do
such an unrelentingly slapdash job on the sequel--a job so badly
done, and (more to the point) so badly received that it went
straight to video stores? Why even consider doing a commercial
theater release in Manila when not even Chicago Tribune critic Roger
Ebert--who, it seems, will review anything shown on the big screen
and say something nice about it--didn't even bother to cover the
movie? Are we Filipinos that gullible an audience, that we'd accept
the most odious garbage discarded by other countries, especially
Hollywood? Does, god forbid, even Ben Affleck and J.Lo's
disastrous "Gigli" have a fighting chance of making money in our
fair if underdiscriminating shores?

I don't know. This not-so-fair sequel directed by Morgan J. Freeman
has as a protagonist Rachael Newman--not a friend of Patrick
Bateman's or sister of Patrick Bateman's or even survivor of an
attack by Bateman, but the babysitting charge of Bateman's final
victim, and his ultimate killer (the child drove an icepick into the
back of Bateman's head). Rachael grows up into a young woman (Mila
Kunis of "That '70s Show") fascinated by Bateman and killers like
him and enrolls in a course in criminology, hoping to eventually
land a job in the Behavioral Science Department of the FBI in
Quantico. Crucial to this career plan is her ambition to become
teaching assistant to the university's most prestigious
criminologist, Professor Robert Starkman, a former FBI legend who
retired because of his failure to prevent the final murder committed
by--you guessed it--Patrick Bateman. Rachael wants to be Starkman's
assistant, but there are others richer or better connected or
possibly more qualified; no one wants it as badly as Rachael,
however, who will very possibly kill to get what she wants. She
reasons it thusly: if it takes a few murders to develop a career
studying and capturing murderers, then so be it: the end justifies
the means.

Other than the brief appearance in the opening sequence (where we
see the back of the head of someone who vaguely resembles Christian
Bale) and a few other mentions of Bateman's name sprinkled
throughout the film, that's about the only connection between the
two films. It's a brazenly tenuous and amusingly self-contained ("it
takes a killer to catch killers") conceit, and you wonder at the
audacity of the filmmakers; it's a concept that stimulates interest,
and sets up expectations of a sequel that flies so far out into
space it could become some kind of bizarro cult classic--like what
happened to John Boorman's "Exorcist 2: The Heretic," a picture
which departed radically in sensibility from William Friedkin's
grimmer, more repulsive "The Exorcist" and achieved a lunatic
metaphysical poetry all its own.

No such luck. Freeman, unlike Boorman, isn't a visual poet--the film
looks about as flat as a made-for-TV movie--and the script (by Alex
Sanger and Karen Craig) after its initial boldness dies whimpering
in a series of endlessly recycled bits from other serial-killer
flicks. Mila Kunis has a bright and perky voice with just the right
amount of barely-submerged bitchiness to give it an edge, and the
kind of large, round eyes that can suggest either out-and-out
innocence or stark, staring sociopath. Too bad her performance is
undone by a script too lazy to work out the details of her complex
plotting and killing (she manages to off at least eight people,
including two male classmates, a janitor, and a security guard), or
give itself even the token semblance of verisimilitude (she seems to
dispose of even male victims without much effort; a psychiatrist
having known of her sociopath condition for some time, doesn't do
much about it; no one talks or even mentions the various
disappearances, or prematurely finds the bodies). When Harron did
this sort of thing in the original "Psycho" she explained most of it
away by suggesting it's all happening in Bateman's mind; a tired
cliché, true, but at least she bothered using one--Freeman doesn't
even bother.

As for William Shatner--a little of him goes a long, long way, I
think, and when you use him in the pivotal role of Professor Robert
Starkman--possibly his most substantial role since the Star Trek
movies--you are definitely making a statement, or at least a unique
kind of comedy. Shatner isn't used as well as I'd have liked, but he
does have moments here that shine--the massive sense of complacency,
for example, that radiates from him when lecturing an audience, or
the oily manner in which he leers into the young women's bosoms, or
the way he squints--eyes narrowing into piggy little slits--in
anticipation of a "private study session" with his favorite pupil.
Shatner is the purest ham, and old age has only served to dry him
out a bit, intensify that salty flavor. It's a crime not to use him
more, or better, and an even bigger crime not to take his cue and go
all the way with this unpromising material--to outer space, perhaps,
and beyond.

(First published in Businessworld, October 10, 2003)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)