Review of Cutaway (2000) by Paul W — 14 Sep 2006

[font=Arial]Some weird synchronicity: Roguebooks reviewed Shallow Grave, which one of our public stations will broadcast tonight. Also, Tim's foray into Eastwood-land is duplicated by another channel's dedication to Clint's set-and-cured face this month. I'm ambivalent about both Eastwood and orangutans as film stars.[/font].

[font=Arial]More public channel slop:[/font].

[font=Arial]With a head full of Tullamore Dew I've railed against some dismal fare lately. Two films that stood out for me, in one way or another, were Demolition Man and Cutaway.[/font].

[font=Arial]Cutaway, like Thrashin', Gleaming the Cube, Point Break and a host of other "show-it-like-it-isn't" films, was doomed from the start. The real in-groups they tried so hard to glamorise immediately disowned these films because cool can't be taught. Nor can "crazy". Scenes with Stephen Baldwin and Dennis Rodman are so hilariously unreal it's easy to think Cutaway is a spoof. Then again, the action between Tom Berenger and Baldwin is so lacking in any kind of merit that humour evaporates. Baldwin and Berenger. My, my, my, what thespian offspring they'd produce.[/font].

[font=Arial]Demolition Man can run rings around ordinary plot loopholes. Of the entire cast of some pretty well-known names, only Rob Schneider seems as if he's trying to suppress a smile and a "Come on now. This is a skit from Punk'd, right?" I've read that this film toyed with Aldous Huxley's [i]Brave New World[/i]. What a slight on a decent book. Some people are given multimillion dollar budgets for practical jokes. It's unfair.[/font].

[font=Arial]Also interesting was the overdubbing (even graphically) of all Taco Bell references with Pizza Hut references. It reminds me of watching Liar Liar while I was living in Korea. At one stage, a character mentioned a famous Japanese baseball pitcher. In the subtitles, the Korean script read, "Park Chan Ho" (of the LA Dodgers). I'm looking forward to the day when movies are edited locally for relevance, political correctness, advertising rights and a dash of jingoism.

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[font=Arial]My feature for next week has been cancelled, which is actually fantastic news. After the soul-destroying task of tracking down government spokespeople (not much spoke in their job description, really) for my survey on one of our cities last week, I wasn't looking forward to dealing with the whole of Botswana in 3200 words. Maybe it is possible. "Next-door neighbours. Quiet and unostentatiously moral; willing to back it up with death sentence. Currency actually pretty strong. Same as it was last year." There.

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