Starring: Diederik, T.J. Lowther, Laura Johnson and Timothy Bottoms
Director: Karen Arbeeny
Writer: Rachel Gordon
Genre: Kids
Year: 1997
My rating:
Once, while not enjoying the fruits of my explorations through the one dollar DVD bin at Wal*Mart, I thought to myself that there is very little that is less endurable than a comedy film that fails at being funny. It turns out that the sliver of awfulness that is worse is a bad kid's movie.
There's something about a uninspired children's film that causes everyone involved to forget everything they learned in film school. The writing becomes lazy. The actors go completely over the top. The director relies on gimmicks. I presume that people involved with the production assume that children don't know the difference between good movie-making and bad, and therefore simply do whatever comes easiest and hope no one in the target audience notices.
The truth, of course, is that naturally children know when something is good or bad. They may not be able to articulate it, but they are fully aware of when a piece of entertainment is causing them to yawn, shift uncomfortably in their chairs, or simply become violently ill due to its complete awfulness.
This particular piece of nonsense -- MR ATLAS -- posits that the Atlas of Greek mythology (you'll remember him as the Titan who holds the weight of the world on his shoulder) has been trapped in a cave in Utah for these past millennia. Released from his bonds by a supposedly precocious ten-year-old boy (Danny), he vows to serve this child as his servant, teaching this youngster about, um, life stuff, while uncomfortably flirting with the kid's hot aunt.
Now the funny thing is that I imagine anyone reading this won't have actually seen this film. And yet you probably know exactly how this plot (what there is of it) is going to unfold.
Atlas will be introduced to the modern world. He'll complain about how bad the air smells nowadays. He'll be dumbfounded by cars. He'll talk in flowery language about his chick who lives in the heavens.
There's just one thing missing, you say: the bad guy. The film needs some kind of smarmy villain. Not an overly powerful super-villain. Just someone greedy and self-serving, someone who's after money for money's sake, and who doesn't have any real motivation to be in the film except to hate the kid and serve as a foil to Atlas.
Enter Timothy Bottoms. He's not just the villain, he's also the sole reason I bought this damn DVD (I usually draw the line on this side of purchasing kid's movies, no matter how cheap they are). Bottoms is notable for having played President George W. Bush in the short lived Trey Parker and Matt Stone Comedy Central sitcom, "That's My Bush!". Here, Bottoms is playing an evil, manipulative businessman, only interested in using people to obtain the natural resources on their property, and with an unfortunate tendency to wave guns around and shoot innocents. That's right; the man famous for playing George Bush is here portraying a man exactly like Dick Cheney. (And for anyone keeping track at home, Bottoms' henchman is a dumb, slow, unintelligent, amiable dope who has a habit of repeating exactly what Bottoms has just said. Make of that what you will.)
I'll discuss the plot now, only out of a sense of obligation rather than the joy I would otherwise experience from introducing people to something new. Actually, I think I accidentally described most of the plot already. Danny is a typical bullied, preyed-upon ten-year-old being raised by his aunt after the clichéd death of his parents. The only major figures in his life are his wealthy aunt (nice, but gullible), his aunt's boyfriend (Timothy Bottoms), and the stereotypical drunken Irishman who tends to the aunt's ranch and dispenses recycled and uninspired stories about local hidden treasure.
Danny fancies himself as an explorer (his parents were archaeologists) and goes off in search of hidden treasure. His quest brings him to a hole in the ground. His encounter with this geographic feature is to do exactly what movie heroes have done for decades before him. He falls into it. All is not lost though (we're less than fifteen minutes into the film at this point). He accidentally releases Atlas from his millennia-long sleep, which promptly puts the audience into a slumber of a similar duration. (Though in a genuinely nice nod to the original myths, apples made of gold are strewn throughout Atlas' cave).
From here on out, the plot takes the expected aforementioned "twists". Evil boyfriend tries to trick the aunt into signing away the rights to the land containing the golden apples; dumb Atlas gets a haircut and tries to figure out how underpants work. A fact which may only amuse me is that the actor/model playing Atlas is named in the credits only as "Diederik". It's rare to find a person with only one name who can act, and if you're looking for one here, you can keep searching.
Perhaps I am being unfair to this movie; after all I am not a younger person and clearly this movie wouldn't be aimed at me. However, I am confident that children would have better taste than to enjoy this movie. Perhaps one must be extremely young, say, still residing in a womb to extract pleasure from MR ATLAS. Or maybe by "younger", the filmmakers were aiming at "younger" on an evolutionary scale. There may indeed be a group of dull monkeys out there, huddled around their DVD players and requesting to watch again "The one with big, smart Mr. Atlas! Ooo oooo oooooo!"
No comments:
Post a Comment