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"Banderas
Must've Been 'Crazy'"
by Scott Mantz
"Crazy in Alabama"
Melanie Griffith, Lucas Black
Directed by Antonio Banderas
I'm always a
little leery when actors suddenly think they can become directors.
Though there have been some nice surprises, such as Tim Robbins'
"Dead Man Walking" and Kevin Costner's "Dances with Wolves", most
actor-directors play it safe and stick to what they already know.
Robert DeNiro knew a thing or two about the mob when he directed
"A Bronx Tale", and 60's music buff Tom Hanks captured time in a
bottle with "That Thing You Do!". Unfortunately, the ambitious,
but wildly uneven, "Crazy in Alabama" proves that first-time director
Antonio Banderas needs a little more practice behind the camera.
After decapitating
her abusive husband and making off with his head in a hat box, Lucille
(Melanie Griffith) heads to Hollywood to realize her dream of being
on her favorite TV show, "Bewitched". The problem is that she hears
the dead husband's voice emanating from the box at the worst times.
But wait! Before you bust a gut with laughter, there's more. Back
in Alabama, her nephew Peejoe (Lucas Black) is witness to the death
of a young black man at the hands of a bigoted cop, and this leads
to intense civil rights uprisings around the narrow-minded community.
If this sounds
like two completely different stories, then you've hit the very
heart of what's wrong with this film. While you've got to admire
Banderas for picking such a weighty issue for his directorial debut,
it feels almost like he loved two scripts so much that he decided
to combine them and film them both. What makes this more problematic
is that the tone for both stories is completely different. There's
the dark, quirky Hollywood humor of one story and there's the insightful
equal rights drama of the other. I couldn't tell whether I should
laugh or cry!
These conflicting
tones wind up distracting from the pleasant performances of the
cast. Since Melanie Griffith sounds like Marilyn Monroe anyway,
she's perfect as the delusional, perky, and battered superstar wannabe.
Her sympathetic and funny turn makes this her best role in some
time. Meat Loaf Aday continues to stretch his acting muscles after
his turn in "Fight Club", and he provides the intimidating threat
as the bigoted cop. As Peejoe, Lucas Black supplies the innocent
and strong backbone to the civil rights story.
If the film
had stayed with one story, the results would have made for a much
stronger film. Griffith's trek to Hollywood provides some good laughs
as she is constantly badgered by the voice of her dead husband.
The scene at a show-biz party turns out to be the best in the film,
supported by excellent, but brief, appearances by Elizabeth Perkins
and Robert Wagner as Hollywood big shots. When Griffith returns
to Alabama to face the music, Rod Steiger gives a scene-stealing
performance as the judge of her murder trial.
One story has
nothing to do with the other, and it makes for a rather frustrating
moviegoing experience. The movie can't decide if it wants to be
a quirky take on 60's superstardom or a preachy period piece on
racism in the deep south. The weightiness of one story takes away
from the humor of the other, and vice-versa. Only when the focus
is on Griffith does the film show any kind of promise. The situation
in Alabama is nothing that hasn't already been done better in films
like "Mississippi Burning" and "A Time to Kill". I found myself
waiting for the story to jump back to Griffith's delusional obsession
with making it in Hollywood, and it just, well, drove me crazy.
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