Splice

Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley

Friend: “We are driving a couple hours to get raw milk for the children.  Do you know what pasteurization and all those chemicals do?”

Me: “Yeah, keeps you from dying.”

            If you had to enter the witness protection program, the best place to hide is in an Adrian Brody movie.  No one would ever see you.  There are huge stars like Kevin Costner, Meg Ryan, and Harrison Ford, whose careers seem to hit walls and these downfalls make sense, younger talent is getting off the bus every day and pretty soon the only scripts being offered are ones written in crayon by 5-year-olds.  Others, like Eddie Murphy, Nicolas Cage, and Demi Moore, watched their careers vanish because they never met a paycheck they did not like, no matter how bad the movie. Yet, it is young up-and-coming actors who seem to have everything going for themselves, that leave you scratching your head.  If there was a Mount Rushmore of wasted talent, the following actors’ faces would be chiseled on it. The only problem with such a monument is, like their films, no one would probably go to see it. In 1995, not even out of her teens, Alicia Silverstone was the hottest thing on the planet with the release of Clueless. She was called the greatest actress of the emerging generation and a bankable box office star for years to come.  Columbia Tristar signed her to an unheard of three year, $10 million production deal and was offered the coveted role of Batgirl in the blockbuster Batman franchise. Can you name any film she has been in the last fifteen years? Her biggest contributions to the culture is turning down the chance to star in the Scream franchise and lounging around naked in PETA ads. Next to her would be Cuba Gooding Jr., a young actor who seemed to own the 1990s.  Boyz in the Hood, Gladiator, A Few Good Men, As Good As It Gets, and an Oscar win for his role in Jerry Maguire, as hard as this is to believe, people actually looked forward to Cuba Gooding Jr. movies. Since then, if you were writing a book on the worst films Hollywood has made the last few years, there would be a whole chapter devoted to Gooding.  Doubt me? I got two words for you – Snow Dogs.  Cinematic abortion is so awful that it should be served on Thanksgiving with cranberries and gravy. Even the best plumber in the world can not unclog the cinematic toilet because of the films Cuba has made – Rat Race, Boat Trip, Norbit,  and Daddy Day Care just to name a few. 

            The third face on this monument would belong to the gentleman who looked like he was going to be the biggest star coming out of the American Pie franchise. (No, not Eugene Levy.) A little over a decade ago, this teenage sex comedy looked like it was going to produce a who’s who of future stars – Mena Suvari, Natasha Lyonne, Seann William Scott, Tara Reid, Shannon Elizabeth, Alyson Hannigan, and Jason Biggs.  Chris Klein had the all-American looks, seemed likable enough, and had starred in Election, co-starred with Mel Gibson, and looked like he had a rocket on his back.  Three years later, the poor guy could not purchase a ticket into a decent film.

            I have devoted countless column space to what happened to the next huge action star, who a decade later is the only one who still thinks he is a star, Vin Diesel. So, the final spot in this basketball team of wasted talent belongs to Adrien Brody, who became a household name with his Best Actor Academy Award for The Pianist.  He was supposed to be the Sean Penn of his generation.  Other than King Kong, his most successful role since then has been in a 7 Up commercial which might go down as the lamest moment in the history of television until Jay Leno got his own prime time talk show. But unlike the four others mentioned above, Brody has always done solid, but often unnoticed, work and seems to be always on the verge of a comeback.

            While Splice will not lead to him holding another statue of a bald, naked golden dude, it is well done.  Ever since Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818, one of the staples of modern entertainment has been the mad scientist, the lone white-coated gentleman monkeying with nature to disastrous results. Never mind that science has made our lives comfortable and saved our backsides more often than a lifeguard at a narcoleptic pool party. There is something disconcerting about playing with nature and this film is the step-child of the old Frankenstein films with a little incest and bestiality thrown in. Director Vincenzo Natali (Cube, Cypher, Nothing) and producer Guillermo del Toro (The Hobbit, Hellboy, Blade II) understand the genre. (In fact, del Toro is developing modern re-imaginations of Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.) Brody and Sarah Polley play gene splicing scientists named Clive and Elsa who work for a genetic research laboratory named Nucleic Exchange Research and Development. (Nerd, get it.) Through the splicing of the genes of several different animals, they have developed two slug-like creatures who they have named Fred and Ginger.  This pair of slimy animals offers the potential cure for countless diseases and conditions.  But you cannot have a good old fashioned horror film without someone taking things too far.  Elsa decides to use a human ovum in their next experiment.  What could go wrong with that? Much like a latter day Adam, at first Clive protests but later gives in.  Like a pop tart springing from a toaster, before you know it, their birthing chamber has given birth to something resembling a hairless, armless, huge guinea pig with a toxic stinger prehensile tail. (That is not going to be involved in the story is it?)

            Like most babies, it is creepy and cute at the same time and Elsa’s maternal instincts take over.  The female creature is named Dren (nerd spelled backward).  Moving to an old barn where Elsa grew up, in order to hide their bundle of joy and freakiness from their bosses and the outside world. The creature speeds through her childhood until she grows into a hot bald chick with kangaroo legs and rudimentary language skills. In other words, your typical teenage girl.  Like most teenagers, she is a handful as she grows up. Now, I know it is hard to find hot teenage girls to sleep with.  You have to buy them a jell-o shot, tell them your wife does not understand you, and pretend to be interested in what they have to say, etc.. If you want to sleep with the experiment in the old barn, maybe you need to look beyond the hottie that was in a Petri dish a few days earlier and has a deadly stinger. Clive is interested in playing whose your daddy, literally, with Dren. It is a dysfunctional family and all that is missing is Jerry Springer. 

            A cursory glance at history shows that every time humanity finds itself facing a challenge, or something that threatens our existence, science puts on Superman’s cape and flies to the rescue.  It has made our lives more comfortable and longer.  Yet, it is easy to understand why people are fearful of it. The Jenny McCarthys of the world are always claiming the sky is falling because of some scientific advancement. Cell phones cause brain cancer. Vaccines cause Autism. (Maybe the increase in Autism is due to the fact that doctors are better able to diagnose it. Just saying.) Western medicine, ugh! The Chinese have been using folk remedies for centuries (and they usually died about thirty, covered in awful boils, screaming for sweet relief). Do you know what is in drinking water? (Yes, fluoride, that thing that keeps your teeth from looking like a box of crackerjacks.) So, as long as we have these everyday fears we will have movies like Splice. 

Verdict: A Good Modern Retelling of the Frankenstein Story