|
 elieve it or not, a film like "Willard" is more
difficult for me to swallow not because of its main premise -- a man learns to
control rats for his own purposes -- but because of the personality of its lead.
Crispin Glover ("Charlie's
Angels") plays the titular character, a 30-something with slick back
hair who wears his father's old suits to work and lives with his bony, shrieking
mother in their old, rat-infested house.
Willard is the ultimate downtrodden man. The film's first
30 minutes is an avalanche of misery inflicted on him. The worst thing in
Willard's life is his boss, Martin (R. Lee Ermey), who owns the factory
Willard's father founded. The epitome of pure evil, or so it seems, Martin is an
unrepentant asshole, torturing Willard at every opportunity. Because of a legal
obligation that guarantees Willard a job at the company, Martin is unable to
fire Willard, ever. The only person who shows any semblance of pity for Willard
is Catherine (Laura Elena Harring), a pretty temp.
Being that Willard lives with his mother in the type of
old, creaky house kids go out of their way to avoid, Willard has no friends.
This changes when Willard captures a small white mouse in one of his traps.
Unable to kill the mouse, Willard instead begins to raise it, even going so far
as to sleep in the same bed with the rodent. The mouse, named Socrates, becomes
an indispensable friend for the formerly friendless Willard. But there's another
rodent in the house name Ben. Ben is a rat the size of a cat, and he's the
undisputed king of rats. And unlike the sweet Socrates, Ben has a taste for
blood.
Most of the problems I have with "Willard" stems
from the main character's wimpy demeanor. For much of the film, Crispin Glover
shifts between a man with a seething anger on the verge of exploding to a
hopeless regurgitation of his George McFly character from "Back to the
Future". Maybe it's just my own personal demeanor, but I have very little
use for Willard. He's so incredibly useless that I don't even blame Ermey's
Martin for doing everything he can to force Willard to quit the job. Would you
want this guy to work for you?
"Willard" is based on a 1971 original, and is
written by Glen Morgan, one half of the Glen Morgan/James Wong writing/directing
team responsible for some of the more inspired episodes of the
"X-Files". Recently the duo have made the jump to films, and includes
"Final Destination" and Jet Li's "The
One" on their list of credits. "Willard" is Morgan's baby,
and although James Wong has producer credit, the film looks nothing like the
duo's previous body of works.
As the sole director, Morgan gives "Willard" a
surreal, almost comic-booky quality. The look of the house, and even the look of
Willard himself, seems unreal. Ermey's complete jerk of a character also adds to
the unnatural vibe of things, and maybe this is the perfect aura to project when
your film is about a lonely guy who teaches rodents to do neat tricks like
maneuver through obstacle courses in his basement. Actually, there is
surprisingly very little time spent on Willard's training of the rodents. There
is a very quick sequence when Willard, by pure accident, learns that by using
simple words he can direct the rodents like a General would his troops on a
battlefield. All of this seems very unlikely, of course, but in the context of
the movie's surreal atmosphere, it's not completely out of the question.
Fans of the original may be wondering what the rats look
like. It's noteworthy to reveal that most of the rodents in the movie are
"played" by real-life rodents, and that there were only a couple of
quick scenes that employed CGI rats (at least that I could detect). (Hint: The
scenes that use fake rats appear in the movie's trailer.) For the most part, the
white mouse Socrates and the large, ever-present rat Ben are very real. Under
Morgan's direction, Ben is extremely believable; he's cunning and sinister and
always seems to be one step ahead of Willard. This rat is dangerous.
Co-star Laura Elena Harring ("Derailed")
seems completely out of place in the movie. Not only is her character a little
too grounded and sane for what's going on, but Catherine gets to be a little
irritating and hapless after a while. For example: In an effort to keep the rats
out of the house, Willard has taped up all of the toilet seats. What does
Catherine do when she comes across a toilet with duct tape over it? Why, she
tears the duct tape off and uses the toilet! You would think she might
take a moment to consider that there may be a reason Willard did this, but I
guess not.
Despite what the movie's advertising would have you
believe, "Willard" is not nearly as violent or dark as you would
think. There are actually only two scenes of rat-on-human violence, and both
appear in the film's final 15 minutes. Besides a terrific 20-minute span where
Willard engages in what amounts to a mental battle with Ben along the hallways,
rooms, and closet spaces of the house, the rest of the film is devoted to poor
Willard suffering under the hands of Ermey.
All of this, of course, is to wind the audience up for the
inevitable payoff at the end. One guess on who will be the victim of honor at
that banquet.
|
