Instinct

I have a rule about who I don't take advice from. I do not take advice from assholes in SUVs with "Free Tibet" bumper stickers, and I don't take advice from preachy, hypocritical Hollywood pricks. Yet, both of these groups are always trying to tell me what to do.

"Instinct" is a movie version of some sappy new-age novel. It tries to tell us that we need to simplify our lives, that we have become a society of greedy takers. Excuse me? Didn't anyone in California stop and say, "Gee, but we are greedy assholes. Should this message come from us?" God damn, if I want a pretentious message, I'll go buy some Sting records.

Hollywood, I have said this to you many times before, but I will say it again, "Go fuck yourself." If I want to be preached to, I will go to church, not to a $5.25 matinee.

Anthony Hopkins is an anthropologist who has gone to Rwanda and made friends with gorillas. He then murders some park rangers and is imprisoned. He is extradited to the U.S. where ambitious psychologist Cuba Gooding, Jr. has the task of getting him to speak again and figuring out why this professor went freakin' nutso. He does, and, after learning that Hopkins isn't crazy, he's brilliant!, he thinks he can get Hopkins out of jail, That is, until Hopkins goes berserk at the prison, which leads to his further incarceration and a heroic, supercheesy escape.

My laundry list of complaints wit "Instinct" has more shit stains on it than a pair of my underwear after an all-you-can-eat buffet. I mean, ladies and gentlemen, this movie blows the foul, sweaty nuts of a long-distance runner. If it weren't for you, my faithful readers, I would have left after ten minutes and had my bikini line waxed.

It's a very talky movie. There is no action except for a couple of scenes where Hopkins beats people up. What's worse, is that the talk is always this oversimplified psychobabble or feeble attempts at conflict. It's fucking boring. Director John Turteltaub tries desperately to raise our pulses by having loud music jolt us every time someone touches someone else, and the person who is touched will jump. Aaahh! Oh, I'm so scared. Oh, it's so exciting. Oh, jeepers, what original ideas! Turteltaub, you're a hack and you need to stop spreading your new-age bullshit as though it were chlamydia.

The soundtrack, a fiasco by Danny Elfman, has lots of uplifting new-agey shit with a chorus chanting unintelligible things. It's like a really long, loud Enya record. And it's everywhere. I swear, someone can't take a piss without the choir joining in. I guess, if I made a shitty, pointless movie I would have a soundtrack that worked like a sitcom laugh-track. You feel good now. You are uplifted. You are scared now.

At the beginning, we are supposed to believe that Hopkins is a madman. Bullshit, we know he isn't and we know why he killed the park rangers. Of course he killed them for killing gorillas. The movie is so stupid it thinks we will be surprised to learn that later.

"Instinct" is supposed to reveal to us how human and wise Hopkins is because he hung out with gorillas. Golly, civilization is bad, we are to think. Jeepers, we do need to get back to basics. Holy shit, any society that could make "Instinct" is seriously fucked-up.

Oh, yeah, this is exactly what Hollywood should be preaching to us. A bunch of overpaid fuckwads in mansions tell the rest of us to simplify our lives. It cost them $60 million to do it? What's worse is that Turteltaub is so fucking pretentious and blind he probably believes himself. He probably thinks he is misunderstood. Well, John, to paraphrase the bible, you must remove the plank from your own eye because removing the splinter from another's. Actually, better yet, why don't you go to Rwanda and live with the gorillas. Maybe they want to hear your new-age bullshit.

The performances are unbelievably corny. Gooding and Hopkins seem to be trying to outact each other, and sometimes they act so hard that they break out in sweat. If one overacts, the other has to add even more eyebrow wiggles and long, hard staring to top him. Not for one second do they pretend they believe in this story - they're too busy acting. Hopkins is fucking lame as a fat, hairy anthropologist with a never-explained violent streak. In some scenes, secondary character Donald Sutherland looks like he's going to come right off the screen and bite your face off. Every character falls into the "good guy" or "bad guy" camp. There are no shades, that would be far too difficult, and maybe Turteltaub was afraid he'd get confused if it wasn't all completely clear.

Two subplots are laughable. There is the dead-on-arrival budding romance between Gooding and Maura Tierney has no tension, no interest, not even kissing. You see, Hollywood movies avoid having black and white people kiss because maybe some racist jackass won't put down his money to watch that. I've been watching white women such black cocks in pornos for years, I think I can handle it, so go right on and let interracial couples go at it. The second subplot is inexplicable filler. It takes place in a stereotypically dirty and run-down prison, filled with really corny and weak-scripted "lovable" kooks. I mean, I guarantee there is not prison in the country as filthy and run-down as this, and there are no crazy people as colorfully predictable as this group of misfits, but it's the level of obviousness this movie strives for. In the prison, Hopkins is housed with the lovable criminally insane, and he and Gooding become their saviors. They stand up for what's "right" and stop the lamely obvious "bad-guy" warden and prison guards from beating the crap out of prisoners. It's a joke, like a USA Channel reworking of "One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest."

Hopkins escapes the prison in the end. I think that we are supposed to cheer for him. Well, that's what the soundtrack told me to think. But I was completely unmoved. I never gave a rat's ass about a single mofo in this bomb. Maybe if everyone wasn't so obvious, if the whole story wasn't so boring, and if they hadn't preached to me, I would have felt something other than "What a piece of shit." One finger. Sir Anthony Hopkins, I agree with you, it's time for you to retire.