Review of Something Wild (1986) by Phil H — 07 Jul 2011

ONE radiantly beautiful, late spring day in lower Manhattan, Charles Driggs (Jeff Daniels), a proper young tax consultant, walks out of a lunchroom without paying his check. It's just a whim - a vestige of the rebel that exists within Charlie. The act goes unnoticed by the cashier, but not by another patron (Melanie Griffith), an eccentrically dressed young woman who wears a Louise Brooks wig of bobbed black hair and initially calls herself Lulu.

The young woman (who's actually a blonde named Audrey) confronts Charlie on the sidewalk. She threatens to call the police and then, instead, offers to drive him to his office. Charlie, both unsettled and intrigued, agrees. Within two hours, Audrey has Charlie somewhere in New Jersey, in a sleazy motel room, handcuffed to the bedpost, sighing with delight as she rips off his clothes and makes love to him.

This is the unlikely but hugely promising beginning of Jonathan Demme's new ''Something Wild,'' which starts off as a comedy, slips into melodrama and winds up as something of a romantic dream. In spite of all its manic shifting of gears, though, ''Something Wild'' never achieves the momentum required to make the transitions from one mood to the next with any ease. One movie ends as an entirely different one begins.

''Something Wild,'' which opens today at the Baronet and other theaters, is often ''Something Wrong.''.

Audrey, it turns out, has identified Charlie as a kindred spirit and has kidnapped him to take him home to Virginia, to introduce him (as her husband) to her mother and to be her escort at her high school reunion. All goes well until Audrey's real husband, Ray (Ray Liotta), a psychotic, small-town hood, turns up at the same reunion. What happens subsequently is a sort of provincial version of Griffin Dunne's nightmare in ''After Hours.''.

As he demonstrated in ''Handle With Care'' and ''Melvin and Howard,'' Mr. Demme has a singular gift for offbeat comedy. When ''Something Wild'' is dealing with the burgeoning relationship between the once-uptight Charlie and the sweetly desperate, near-alcoholic Audrey, the film has the manner of a screwball comedy designed for the 1980's. It's full of quirky lines and characters, including Audrey's old-shoe, resolutely unshockable mother (Dana Preu), called Peaches.

It's also full of dead ends and red herrings. As written, Audrey would seem to be a most unlikely fan of Louise Brooks, and I can only believe that when, late in the film, we see her reading a book about Winnie Mandela, it's supposed to be a sight-gag.

The performances are, without exception, good. Mr. Daniels, best remembered for his role as the disconnected actor in Woody Allen's ''Purple Rose of Cairo,'' and Miss Griffith, who sometimes sounds eerily like Judy Holliday, play - when allowed - with the sort of earnest intensity that is the basis of comedy at its best. Mr. Liotta,here a newcomer, nearly walks off with his sections of the film, while Miss Preu, who was so fine in Victor Nunez's ''Gal Young Un,'' actually does.

Almost as good are the other members of the supporting cast, including Jack Gilpin, Charles Napier and Mr. Demme's fellow directors, John Sayles and John Waters, who do cameos.

The film's principal difficulty is E. Max Frye's original screenplay, which is better thought out in terms of its narrative than of the characters who, in one way and another, are supposed to make it all happen. Missing is the impulse for what we are led to believe is the liberating behavior of Audrey and Charlie. They are so dimly written that they must be characterized entirely in terms of the actors' performances, the clothes they wear and the soundtrack music.

Because that's not good enough, there is no real payoff. By the end of ''Something Wild,'' you may well ask, ''So what?'' BREAKING OUT SOMETHING WILD.