Hannibal

I've been at the First American Video now for almost two weeks, so it's almost time I can take a sick day without raising too much suspicion. Two weeks is the third longest I have ever held a job, and this isn't as bad as I expected. I get free movie rentals, but I can only pick them after the store is closed so I don't choose something that a customer might want. That's no problem because the movies I like aren't very popular. But, I can't check out the pornos for free, or show them on the store monitors. Also, after I have been there two months I get to put videos in the "Employee's Picks" section. I can start placing "Barely Legal 14" and "African Ass Bandits" up there right next to Dipshit Suzanne's "Frequency" and "Ghost."

There are three things that make working in a video store suck crusty dick, though. First is that I am not allowed to yell at the assholes who spend a half hour in the store, walk past every Alfred Hitchcock movie and end up with Demolition Man or Deuce Bigalow, which the fuckers have already seen more than once. I have been told by Dipshit Suzanne that I am not allowed to punch these people. The second is people who ask me if The Story of Us is good, because I am not allowed to tell them it's dogshit in cassette format. I have to say "It's a very good romantic comedy," and if I don't Dipshit Suzanne will fire me. The third thing that sucks is Dipshit Suzanne, who owns First American and doesn't even like movies. She likes to say dopey crap like, "Did you see Gideon's Crossing last night?" and "I only eat meats and greens," (plus about five dollars worth of Junior Mints off the shelves when she thinks nobody's looking) and "If I catch you with beer at work again you're fired."

But you don't come here to listen to me bitch and moan about my job; you come here to listen to me bitch and moan about movies. This week I got a bladder full of pissing to do on Hannibal, so get those ears ready. This fucking movie sucked hard enough to rip my entrails out through my ass. It started out boring and then became ludicrous. It's exactly what happens when stupid people try to make a movie about characters who are supposed to be smarter than them.

Anthony Hopkins is back as Hannibal Lecter, the serial cannibal, now some sort of fancy Italian art genius. Julianne Moore is now Clarice Starling, the "brilliant" young FBI agent who has a special connection with Hopkins. Lecter is in Italy, seemingly blending in as some sort of scholar while Moore is home in the US getting blamed for a drug bust gone awry. She can salvage her career by tracking down Hopkins after being given a lead by a very ugly billionaire (Gary Oldman) who secretly only wants help tracking down Hopkins for himself. Oldman was once seduced into skinning himself by Hopkins, and he wants revenge. This is a subplot that really goes nowhere except as a series of scenes where the audience is supposed to be grossed out by Oldman's face, over and over, and as a device to bring Hopkins to Moore.

When an Italian cop closes in on him and he learns his old sweetheart Moore is back on the case, Hopkins makes plans to return to the US and greet her. Moore and Oldman track him down in different ways, leading to the much-too-late and conventional showdown.

The reason so many Hollywood movies are as dumb as shit on a TV tray is because nobody can create a character smarter than himself, and the majority of "creative" people in Hollywood aren't as smart as my retard cousin Larry. Villains are only as clever asHollywood writers and directors can imagine them being, which is, as we know, not very. Holy shit would I love to pile a bunch of screenwriters into a pit with alligators and see how smart they are. Silence of the Lambs was great because of how smart and complete the villain and hero were. It was fun to watch them duel.

But in Hannibal, the very smart Lecter and Starling from Silence are replaced by wax dummies. They look the same, their gestures are the same, but the way they think, talk and operate is no smarter than screenwriter Steven Zaillian, who was responsible for such gems as the plodding A Civil Action and the Tom Cruise shitfest Mission: Impossible.

Lecter was scary because he was so fucking smart. He already knew everyone's next move, and the one after that. In Hannibal, he's just another cheesy movie monster who can magically appear and disappear wherever he needs to, and spends a lot of times in shadows like some lame boogie man. We're supposed to remember that he's smart from the first movie, but we aren't given any evidence of it here. And where the Starling character was vulnerable and only slightly less intelligent than Lecter, now she's weary and lifeless. There are no brilliant exchanges between her and Hannibal, no battles of wits. They just chase each other around.

This movie sucks not for a lack of trying. It looks like they spent a lot of money and worked very hard to convince us it's intelligent. But all of the Italian villas and speeches about Dante don't mean shit when the characters don't show any brains. All it does is make the movie seem like your typical PBS watcher or Mensa member: more obsessed with how smart others think he is than with having any practical knowledge. This is Hollywood screaming "Look! Look! Look how smart we are! Look at our good taste and all the fancy books in our library!" Never mind that the books' spines have never been cracked.

Hannibal drips along like the remains of a bad salad bar out my ass: disgusting, boring and with just a little burning sting. The movie never became suspenseful and I never really gave a flying fuck whether Hannibal was caught. Ridley Scott and Zaillian were way too obsessed with showing us gory shit and fanciness than building toward anything. Partially, that's why the movie gets silly. After a while of hauling Hopkins out, having him say some Schwarzenegger-quality double entendre, showing us how hard Moore works, and giving Oldman a chance to overact under his "creepy" raw skin, the filmmakers figured it was time to wrap the mess up.

Because there is no foundation for a thoughtful ending, they use hoary horror-flick clichés dressed up real nice-like. It's gross-out shit that doesn't scare, just makes you go "Ewww." A man is eaten by pigs, another has his brains served to him. None of it makes much sense, both logistically and from what we know of the character's motivations.

Two fingers for Hannibal. Hollywood, stop overestimating how smart you are and how dumb we are.