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| Directed by Steve Miner; Starring Bridget Fonda, Bill Pullman, Oliver Platt, Brenden Gleeson, Betty White, and Meredith Salenger |
Steve Miner strikes again with yet another bad film. The Halloween: H20 and Big Bully director seems to be on a role only preceded by Akiva Goldsman (writer of Lost in Space, Batman & Robin, and Practical Magic, just to name a few of his atrocities). In fact, I’ve never liked anything directed by Miner ranging from the unfunny Soul Man to the sappy Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken to the far from scary House. Of course what do you expect from the guy who directed both Friday the 13th 2 and 3?
With Lake Placid, Miner is set up with one of the hottest writers out there: TV hit writer David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal, The Practice, Chicago Hope). The fact that Kelley was behind the script did cause me to think that the film may be good, but, alas, it is not.
In the Jaws book of filmmaking, Lake Placid is about the carnage that happens when an alligator happens into a small New England area. Of course instead of the visitor hungry mayor stopping the apprehension of the animal, it is an old lady with ill-fated cattle.
The small town in Maine that serves as a setting for Lake Placid looks straight from the Georgia set Deliverance (I believe the Bridget Fonda character even mentions this in the film). There is a nice, near wave free lake, unnamed though intended as Lake Placid. There a local sheriff (terrific Irish actor Gleeson) takes a water surveyor who finds a little more in the water than he had bargained for. When the remains of the surveyor turn up what seems to be a prehistoric tooth, a museum in New York sends its recently dumped paleontologist (Fonda) to try to see what is there and get her away from her ex-lover boss. Set up with the sheriff, a local environmental agent (Pullman), a alligator loving millionaire (Platt), and a barrage of delicious looking deputies, they find none other than a 30 foot alligator loved by the woman that lives on the lake (White).
Lake Placid rarely goes anywhere beyond killing animals, though when it gets humans, they do throw in the gore. I must admit that there were some genuine laughs (beyond those “boy this is really bad” laughs), mainly revolving around the foul mouthed Betty White character. Gleeson and Pullman both carry their weight in the film, but I thought that Fonda and Platt were somewhat below par. Kelley’s script does have its moments, but not enough. Then there is Miner, who might actually defeat Griffin Dunne as the worst modern director.
With a few moments of pure fun, Lake Placid does dig itself out of a hole, just not far enough.
