Review of Auto Focus (2002) by Pamela D — 10 May 2011

She's a good girl until she figures out that fuzzy thing she's sitting on can make her a lot of money. A great line, probably never delivered by Bob Crane, but nonetheless used by Kinnear portraying Crane, the sex-crazed star of Hogan's Heroes whose murder was never solved.

I liked the grittiness of this. Here I was expecting sort of a fluff film...Kinnear playing a guy from a cheesy sitcom? How bad could it be? Well, turns out the real Crane was into some pretty devious shit. It's just wonderful that America had the wool pulled over its eyes on that one. The guy on the bigscreen was All-American, and maybe after the show, he could photo/video your nude daughter. Dafoe is always great but may be extra good as the creep who brings all the technology to the table and becomes the friend who may or may not have murdered Crane and jerked off on the body (look it up as that part is not in the movie).

One side note, it is painfully awesome how the girls, now and then, are so in love with stardom. Crane, as portrayed, is a complete loser yet can go into pretty much any bar after a show and get babes to come to his seedy motel room and take off their clothes on camera. Maybe the photo albums were film-only, but I suspect they were very real.