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BY DANIEL
BAIG | The radio ads which have been airing for Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (the
movie’s full title, presumably to differentiate it from those other, slightly
more obscure movies Seymour J. Blasskowitz: Tomb Raider, Laura Kroft: Skin Aesthetician,
and that documentary about hysterectomies, Womb Raider) exhort the listener
to, "See it Friday June 15th!" Usually this kind of commercial ends
with an announcement merely telling folks "Opens Friday [the whatever]." In
this case, though, Paramount has a very good reason for trying to get the kids
into the local multiplex on opening day. They know that that’s their best
shot at making any money off their product – if they manage to have everyone
who had been planning to see it see it on the first day, they’ll be all
right. Because once word-of-mouth starts spreading, they’re sunk.
For LC:TM
is destined to go down in moviemaking lore, and not because it’s good.
Every so often a movie comes out which is such a jawdropping misfire that it
inspires more press and discussion about where exactly it went wrong (or the
futility of even trying to begin to sort out where the first mistakes were made)
than most far more successful pictures. These are, or were meant to be, high
profile projects, with big stars and often VERY big budgets. They often have
multiple release dates, as the studio keeps pushing back the inevitable day
of doom through endless rounds of testing and calling in top editors to see
if they can salvage something from the mess. This year we’ve already had
at least two such long-delayed, big-name actor starrer bombs, Company Man, and
Town and Country. Sometimes, of course, a studio is locked into a release date
because they had been so expectant that the movie was guaranteed box office
gold that they’re just forced to hope for the best. In the past year John
Travolta had one of each kind, with the twin disasters that were the DOA Battlefield
Earth, and the finally, after numerous announced release dates, equally terminal
Lucky Numbers.
Sometimes
books are even authored which examine in detail these catastrophic celluloid
miscalculations, like Julie Salamon’s The Devil’s Candy, about Brian
DePalma’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, in addition to high profile magazine
and newspaper articles like those seen dissecting Town and Country. Amazingly,
it looks like Angelina Jolie will be joining Travolta in the twofer club, also
with one of each of the two main kinds of disasters. Later on in the summer
she’ll – finally – be seen in Original Sin, whose release date
seems to have been pushed back with every change of the pollen count in L.A.
But first -- she has her very own Ishtar.
For Tomb Raider
is definitely the kind of wonder that people like Julie Salamon write books
about.
It’s not
that it’s terrible. Because it’s not. It’s just that it’s
such a mess all you can think when you leave the theater (actually, the thought
occurs WELL before the movie’s over, with more and more increasing frequency)
is – "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING???"
A friend of mine
recently told me he thought I made too many references to older movies in my
reviews. I looked back at some of the recent ones to see how warranted his criticism
was. But I came to the conclusion that it’s often the appropriate thing
to do. Sometimes its because the parallels between one movie and another are
obvious, and illuminating, as was the case with The Center of the World and
Pretty Woman. At other times the people publicizing the film are drawing the
parallels themselves, and thus it makes sense to examine how valid the claim
is; this was why I talked about why With A Friend Like Harry wasn’t as
Hitchcockian as its ad campaign was insisting.
And in some rare
cases, comparisons of new movies (or any kind of art, really) with previous
ones make sense because it enables one to instantly understand, if one is familiar
with the original, the newer one.
And that’s
how it is with Tomb Raider. If you’ve seen the 1998 The Avengers, you know
all you need to know about Tomb Raider. For all intents and purposes, it IS
The Avengers, reincarnated.
The correspondences
are extraordinary. Both are big screen versions of a highly popular title from
another medium – in the case of The Avengers, a much beloved TV show, and
in Tomb Raider’s case a highly popular video game. Both films star an unconventionally
beautiful Academy-Award-for-best-supporting-actress-nominated American actress
with huge eyes and long hair playing a witty, sexy English heroine who struts
and strides about in striking skin-tight costumes while she saves the world
from destruction at the hands of an evil genius while usually boasting a sardonic
smile and absolutely NEVER losing her cool. In both movies she is cast against
a handsome blond English actor with whose character hers has an ambiguous sexual
chemistry, which finds release only at the very end, in the form of a kiss.
Both movies, in
addition to having cool soundtracks, with a mix of nifty electronica-type songs
and an eery score played over nifty opening titles, boast at times brilliant,
though often eccentric, production design, with beautiful costumes and elaborate,
impressive sets – with both saving the most complicated set, whose centerpieces
are a huge contraption with massive revolving spheres and rings, for the final
showdown with the villain in which the fate of the world is decided. (By the
way, if you’ve seen The Dark Crystal you’ve already seen Tomb Raider’s
orrery [look it up], done better, and if you haven’t, you should; it’s
an amazing movie.) In both cases this final showdown, unfortunately, due to
overediting, becomes almost incoherent and impossible to fully follow.
Both films, indeed,
were apparently ruined by excessive trimming. They’re both EXTREMELY short
for a non-animated feature, running just about 90 minutes.
Each movie is
largely set in an England mysteriously devoid of much in the way of a populace.
The Avengers’ London had apparently about five residents, while Lady Lara
Croft lives on a massive estate run entirely by her butler.
And finally, in
perhaps the most bizarre example of how The Avengers and Tomb Raider are like
separated at birth twins, they both feature a British "alternative comedian"
in a supporting role in which he’s supposed to be funny but isn’t,
because he’s given no funny lines and nothing funny to do. In The Avengers
it was Eddie Izzard; in TR it’s Chris Barrie. In both it’s a criminal
waste of talent. Tomb Raider actually tops The Avengers here, though, because
it has THREE goofy-looking but respected British (okay, Noah Taylor is actually
from Australia but he makes his home in England and besides Australia is still
technically part of the British Empire) actors cast for comic relief but hampered
by an utter lack of humorous material. There’s material, but it lands with
a leaden thud every time – as an example, Noah Taylor gets to deliver the
uproarious line, "My bum’s fallen asleep," during a long plane ride. If
you’re not laughing reading that now, you won’t in the theater either,
because it’s no funnier there.
Things like this
keep making me half think that maybe there’s actually a great Lara Croft:
Tomb Raider out there lost in a film lab somewhere, and that they were forced
to assemble what we see from the pieces that were originally CUT OUT. This would
explain the scenes that don’t make sense, the significant glances between
characters that actually don’t signify anything, etc.
It also would
explain why the movie is so short and makes you leave with a definite feeling
of not having gotten your money’s worth. There are really only three big
action set pieces in the movie, not counting the stupid opening where Lara battles
her pet robot for fighting practice. The only truly fun sequence is in the middle,
in "The Temple of the Dancing Light," which has some nice CGI monsters. Pointedly,
this scene is the one most like the world of Indiana Jones, a place Simon West
has kept saying he was most definitely not interested in going to with Tomb
Raider. Well, that bit aside, he kept to his word. Despite what the admittedly
cool trailer is implying, this is no Raiders. It’s not even a Temple of
Doom.
And it would also
explain what happened to the eels. In an interview, Angelina Jolie said one
of the things she was excited about the movie was that in one scene she had
to go swimming with hundreds of eels. Where are they? On the cutting room floor
with all the funny jokes, and the plot explanations?
To be fair, there
are some nice things in TR. Although the action sequence that immediately follows
is choppily edited and too dark to even make out who’s shooting who, the
"bungee ballet" scene, where Lara hangs from the skylight roof of her mansion
and does somersaults, etc. is actually quite lovely to look at.
There’s a
good line (with as many writers as this project had, one would have thought
there’d be more than just the one, though) where Lara deftly points out
that the head bad guy himself has a higher up boss; in their headquarters, she
points to the chair in the middle and mocks her antagonist – "Who sits
here? I don’t think YOU sit here." Jolie delivers this perfectly. There’s
nothing wrong with her performance actually at all, except for her accent. She’s
called upon to be insouciant, confident, and sexy, and she is. As far as her
accent goes, though – well, let’s just say she’s no Renee "Bridget"
Zellwegger.
There is also
a cool bit where Lara dogsleds through a tunnel -- without a sled. And there
are some VERY pretty floating ice floes, and some striking mountains.
On the other hand,
we also have EVERY SINGLE SCENE WITH JON VOIGHT, who is SECOND BILLED!, set
inside the same little yellow tent. We have egregious product placement for
Erickson. We have a bad guy stabbed THROUGH THE HEART! who gets up and fights
like nothing is wrong with him.
Now,
to be fair to the The Avengers, I should say that it’s actually
a better movie than this. Additionally, it wasn’t as disappointing
because mostly it just promised "cool," which it did have. Tomb
Raider, however, promises a terrific action adventure popcorn movie,
but, sadly, it’s mostly just a fiasco.
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