A beautiful woman with a body covered with hair,
an uptight scientist whose passion is teaching mice
to use table manners, a man raised in the wild by an
ape (well, by a man who thought he was an ape): three
stories weave together slowly making sense and or
little sense (purposely of course) with the soul
point of entertaining. Oh, there's also the occasional
statement of razor sharp truth, "Just don't do all
those things that you really want to do ... then
you'll be civilized." (I paraphrase.)
If you like quirky, odd movies and/or irony,
here's a fun one.
From the writer of another fun weird little film
called, "Being John
Malkovich," "Human Nature" maturely develops
an offbeat idea. Tim Robbins and Rhys Ifans (as the
ape/man) are both strong, but Patricia Arquette
successfully empathetically realizes her difficult
dynamic role as the hairy woman. All others perform
well, and in a small cartoony roll spoofing the
1950's TV dad, Robert Forster cracked me up.
Minor technical problems plagued my particular
screening, with the film losing focus at reel
changes. Nor was the cute little hawk/mice parable
all that smashing. Cinematically clinical (aside from
Tim Robbins in limbo), the picture relies on good
storytelling, acting, direction, humor and oddity. It
works.
Rhys Ifans says that the four central characters
are "coming from completely different places and
somehow Charlie manages to weave this fabric where
these people collide. And it's so important that you
have filmmakers and actors that understand the nature
of that collision. Because when they do, it's a
magical experience, as opposed to an episode of
'Benny Hill.'"
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