Yo ho ho, arrh!
Anthony Michael Hall, Justine Bateman and Shadoe Stevens in the same movie? How can this fail? Okay, so there's not actually a bucket of blood in this movie, I can deal with that.
Hall plays Walter, a hopelessly talentless sculptor-wannabe who works as a busboy in the Jabberjaw, a super-"hip" 90's-beatnik coffeehouse which is frequented by an assortment of pretentious artsy types (the kind that don't/can't actually make a living off their art, and thus become even more pretentious). One day, while trying to sculpt a bust of the face of his crush Carla (Bateman), he kind of kills the landlady's cat. So he covers it in plaster and passes it off as a new sculpture, "Dead Cat", which makes him the toast of the town. Under enormous pressure to top his sculptorial opus, he of course moves on to bigger things.
If you like the idea of the coffee-house scenes in So I Married An Axe Murderer stretched out over 85 minutes, this movie's for you. Don't get me wrong - I like that idea, and I liked this movie. But it won't be for everyone, and I imagine a lot of people are going to find it repetitive (and some silly few may actually be offended by the portrayal of the performance artists and their hangers-on).
Hall is fine in his role, though it doesn't ask for him to do much other than to look shy (and then at the end look crazy). He's somehow grown to look exactly like a red-haired Robert Downey Jr., though I believe Hall has managed to stay out of too much trouble. Stevens is hilarious as the super-pretentious, self-serving ("Art is...all else, is not") beat poet Maxwell who doesn't even bother to memorize his own poetry. Bateman makes the strange acting decision of using this indefinite accent which keeps jumping all over Europe; ah, the days when Bateman was billed higher than Julia Roberts was. (Remember Satisfaction? Don't answer that.)
The bit players also make a big difference here, with a few very able comic actors (like Victor Wilson and David Cross) taking small roles and making them a lot funnier than they might've been in less assured hands. The Jabberjaw is loaded with all sorts of amusing characters, which are all funny for different reasons.
The story is everything you'd expect, for better or worse, but there I'm rather surprised by how much I warmed to this silly movie. When Walter is hailed as a genius, it's actually quite satisfying to see him endorsed by even a pompous blowhard like Maxwell, and I found myself actually cheering the guy on. It's more lightweight than anything you're likely to find in the horror section any time soon, but it's, I dunno, it's cute.
Also known as The Death Artist and Dark Secrets. One of many recent efforts Roger Corman has made to remake (this time, as producer) any number of his older flicks.
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