FILM: Of Witches and Muses - Review

Why are people so benighted as to think The Blair Witch Project a terrific movie? Is it because it was made by five young kids? Because it cost only $35,000? Because it was a hit at the Sundance Festival (the worst possible reason)? Because they find it truly scary? For that, it would have to be, on some level, plausible; have characters that are, in some way, appealing. I find neither to be the case. Or because it is being sold with a monstrously effective hype? Now that is scary.

An opening title card announces that three young filmmakers vanished into a Maryland forest, where they had gone in search of a reputed witch. A year later, this film shot by them was found, and tells their story. The very first absurdity is that, as the two young men and one young woman each had a video camera, the film would really have to be three films. Edited into one, it predicates the work of editors, undercutting its documentary authenticity.

Next, these Maryland woods seem neither thick nor extensive enough to warrant such a disappearance. The young people, moreover, have only one map, which they read with difficulty, and which one of them, for no good reason, throws away. They also have only one compass, which they don't resort to till late in the game. When they come across a stream, they do not have brains enough to follow it; it would surely lead them to human habitations. Further, they keep fighting among themselves, which, under the circumstances, is imbecile. And finally, they keep shooting their film with their cumbersome equipment instead of jettisoning it and facilitating their escape.

The strength of the film supposedly resides in the invisibility of the enemy; the witch, or just some locals having fun with the trio. Only disturbing nocturnal sounds are heard, and disquieting manikins made of twigs hang in the trees near the campsites in the morning. That may, perhaps, be scarier than actual sightings, but when certain key things are shot so we can't quite make them out even up close, that is cheating.

What is imposing is the extensive and manifold hype the movie is getting. The press, TV, the Internet are full of it. I just read in the New York Times that "the voodoo doll-like stick figures . . . were based on an ancient runic figure called the Burning Man [plagiarized from a 1973 film, The Wicker Man] . . . [and] are drawing as much as $300 on the Internet." That is a bit steep; but if someone could inform me where I could get them for, say, $250, I would gladly order a dozen.

Albert Brooks-filmmaker and actor-began as a funny guy. But that was long ago, and his later films, co-written with Monica Johnson, were progressively less funny, despite some nice bits. There are few of these in his latest, The Muse, and those mostly in the first half. The movie begins with the screenwriter Steven Phillips (Brooks) winning a humanitarian award in some smallish hotel banquet room-but are there such awards outside the Oscars? Anyway, he concludes his acceptance speech with, "I feel like the king of this room," which is, of course, a dig at James Cameron's "King of the World" gloat at the Oscars.

Most moviegoers should get that one, but there are in-jokes that may prove too esoteric for the mass market, which Brooks is, to his disadvantage, wooing nowadays. When a junior studio executive turns down Steven's latest for "loss of creative edge," the worried fellow seeks out a super-successful colleague at his Bel Air estate. The guy (Jeff Bridges) tells him about the Hollywood Muse, Sarah, who has been inspiring him and many other successful scenarists, and who might just take on another client.

The Muse actually claims Zeus as her father, though she also mentions parents retired to Florida. She requires gifts, which turn out to be mighty expensive: a fancy suite at the Four Seasons, a limo and driver, whatever food she craves at whatever hour, and Steven to be reachable by phone day and night to do her bidding, which does not go over big with him or his wife, Laura (Andie MacDowell). Well, if there can be a Blair witch, why not a Muse? But are Muses so greedy and demanding? How much did Homer pay Calliope? And who is the Muse of screenwriting? I don't recall a Sarah among the nine.

And if Sarah has all these celebrated filmmakers as her clients (cameo roles for three of them playing themselves), why does Steven have to foot all her bills? And why does this Muse have to change residences all the time? Aren't Helicon and Parnassus good enough? Worst of all, the movie eventually proposes a different provenance for Sarah, which totally contradicts Musedom, then pulls a second switcheroo that belies the first. What has become of method in Hollywood madness?

Albert Brooks is still funny as an actor, Sharon Stone is still sexy as Sarah (though a Muse should know that groceries is not pronounced grosheries except by ignoramuses), and Andie MacDowell is still, alas, Andie MacDowell. Jeff Bridges is wasted on a puny role, and the guest appearances by celebrities (some of them rather dubious ones like Lorenzo Lamas and Jennifer Tilly) prove of diminishing interest. Mark Feuerstein as the obnoxious studio executive and Bradley Whitford as Steven's maddening agent do their amusing bits expertly, but as a fictional cousin of Steven Spielberg, Steven Wright is unfunny in an unfunny part. This may in fact be Albert Brooks's least funny movie, perhaps because it is the first to be inspired by Sarah.

If you want to see how funny a movie can get, catch The Dinner Game, as Le Diner de cons (The Dinner of Jerks) has been unsatisfactorily Englished. Written and directed by Francis Veber of La Cage aux folles fame, this concerns a weekly dinner given by pranksters, to which each guest must bring along a jerk dumb enough not even to know when he is mocked. At the bit of a dinner we see, an expert in boomerangs who gets himself knocked out by them has the others laughing inwardly as he delivers a paean to the boomerang.

The publisher Brochant intends to squire Pignon, a low-level clerk at the Ministry of Finance who reproduces famous monuments with matchsticks and will regale you with the exact number of matches and tubes of glue it takes to build them. Brochant has invited Pignon to a pre-dinner drink at his apartment, but having just wrenched his back, can't go. Pignon stays on to be helpful, especially after a phone message from Christine Brochant announces that she is leaving her husband. Pignon's wife left with a friend of his two years ago, which makes Pignon especially sympathetic.

But beware of Pignon's helpfulness! Whatever he tries to do for Brochant lands the publisher in a worse mess, from little clumsinesses to catastrophic whoppers. When Brochant's mistress is to be gotten rid of, it is Pignon who opens the door. Not knowing that the woman he sees is not the mistress at all, but Christine, who has changed her mind, he tells her to be temporarily satisfied with the usual four to five visits a week. No wonder she departs with even firmer resolve this time.

It is hard to convey the humor of farce out of context and in cold print. What matters most is that Jacques Villeret, as Pignon, Thierry Lhermitte as Brochant, and Francis Huster as a friend all have split- second timing and knockout facial expressions. Best of all may be Daniel Prevost, as a smug tax collector named Cheval, who horses around with exquisite dignity. See it!

COPYRIGHT 1999 National Review, Inc.
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