bdglchst@ac.dal.ca (12/07/90)
MISERY
[Minor Spoilers]
A film review by Bruce D. Gilchrist
Copyright 1990 Bruce D. Gilchrist
Misery Review
By: Bruce D. Gilchrist
Score 6.5/10
On the plus side:
Kathy Bates acting is superb.
Direction is smooth.
James Caan is pretty good.
When the horror comes, it comes good.
There is lots of humour, some good 'n' black
Had a great book to work from (not really a fan, but MISERY is
SK's best)
What disturbing visual effects there are, look good.
The Liberace bits are the best bits of the movie.
On the negative side:
William Goldman's script is rather dull and uninspired.
Stephen King should have written the screenplay.
The editing is only adequate.
Some rather cheapo scenes were used.
The movie definitely wasn't dark and evil enough.
Sometimes the humour is not in the right place.
The movie has an overall rushed appearance.
This does not appear as a Rob Reiner film.
If you didn't know you certainly wouldn't equate it with his
previous works.
MINOR SPOILERS
It AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH isn't true to the book. There
is a lot of rewriting of the interactions between Paul and Annie (no
good). There is a lot of rewriting in of new characters (quite well
done). Annie just doesn't get to do as much of what she did (i.e.,
gross things) in the book. They changed the ending.
The one thing that I was really looking forward to was a good
movie. Which it is. I heartily recommend this to fans. I was also
looking for an unadulterated transference of the book. Which it is not.
Why can't they leave good enough alone? Personally I saw no reason to
change what they did (although I liked all of the new characters) but
they didn't allow Annie to let go enough.
I have to admit I was going with really high expectations. Well, I
figured it's SK's best book and Rob Reiner directing. What could be better?
It came up to all standards for a good movie, which it was. But it didn't make
it to a great movie. There are some great scenes (especially the hobbling
WOW!) and some good shots (esp. Annie driving) but overall there wasn't enuff
to bump it over to the really good or classic level. I wouldn't mind
seeing someone else try to work this. Here goes... Kathy Bates - Annie
(she is by far the best thing about the movie. I wouldn't be surprised
by an Oscar nomination--yes, she's really that good!). Malcom McDowell
- Paul Sheldon, Director - The Coen Brothers. Don't take this too
seriously.
So overall, good, worth seeing, but not the best you're gonna see.
If you're wondering how I saw this early, I got special passes to a
preview showing.hikaru@sumax.seattleu.edu (Richard Barrett) (12/07/90)
MISERY
A film review by Richard Barrett
Copyright 1990 Richard Barrett
Stephen King evidently dislikes writers a great deal. In THE
SHINING, a playwright gets possessed by a maniacal mansion and tries to
kill his family. In STAND BY ME, a young writer wanna-be finds a leech
sucking blood from his testicles. And now, in MISERY, the latest movie
to be adapted from a book of his, a popular romance novelist gets in a
car wreck, and is brutalized by his "Number One Fan" until he agrees to
write the book that she wants him to write.
The opening scene has Paul Sheldon (played by James Caan),
America's most popular author of dimestore romance books, finishing a
new book, which he has yet to title. We see him sitting at his
typewriter in a cabin in the woods, typing the final sentence of this
new book. He obviously is proud of himself for writing this novel. We
can see a lone cigarette, a single kitchen match, and a bottle of
champagne sitting not 20 feet away from him, and he gladly partakes of
this after penciling "THE END" on the last page of his manuscript. He
takes this manuscript, puts it in an old leather case, and drives off.
Unfortunately, it is snowing quite heavily, and his car goes off the
road. Fortunately (or so it seems at the time), a rescuer comes and
pries him out of the wreckage.
What follows is not a horror movie. Not really. What we have is
closer to a comedic treatment of a horror movie, rather like WHEN HARRY
MET SALLY meets THE SHINING.
Sheldon's "Number One Fan," played by Kathy Bates, turns out to be
a nurse who loves his books - specifically, the only series that he has
written for the last 20 years, a series with a character named Misery
Chastain. (Sheldon, sick of writing romance fiction, had decided to
kill of the character in the next book, which was about to be released.)
But she is also somewhat of an obsessive - when she finishes the book
containing Misery's death, she calls Sheldon a "murderer" and leaves,
obviously extremely angry.
Calming down, she tells him that nobody knows that he's with her,
that everybody thinks that he's dead. And with his legs burdened with
multiple fractures, he cannot walk. So she forces him to write a new
Misery book - one that brings her back to life. She forces him to burn
the manuscript of the book he had just finished, which was evidently his
attempt at writing serious fiction.
In the process of forcing Sheldon to write a new Misery book, she
mutilates, cripples, and drugs him, all the while telling him "I feed
you, clean you, dress you - and still no appreciation for me!"
Director Rob Reiner does an excellent job of accenting the humor
that was probably very scarce in the original book - a feat which he
also achieved with STAND BY ME. There are few actual scenes of horror
throughout the movie, merely one or two quite painful scenes that make
you shudder with pain along with the characters.
The acting is also excellent - Kathy Bates makes her character of
the maniacal nurse from hell quite believable, and also makes quite
evident the unstated fact in the movie that her character was a graduate
of Catholic school. James Caan, while having a very thankless role, is
able to go from the usual big, tough guys with a soft spot that he
usually plays, to this quiet, superstitious, gentle writer who has to
get tough in order to survive with this woman.
Complaints: Just how Caan's character gets out of his situation is
never made quite clear - we are shown one gut-wrenching scene, and then
see him far removed from it a minute later. Frances Sternhagen, who
plays a deputy in the small town where this takes place, appears to be
nothing but a wasted role.
But this is really nitpicking - the main hate/hate relationship
between Bates and Caan are what count here, and Reiner pulls it off very
smoothly.baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (The Phantom) (12/07/90)
MISERY
A review in the public domain
by The Phantom
(baumgart@esquire.dpw.com)
A Stephen King novel is to literature what a Big Mac, a large
fries, and a Coke are to fine cuisine. Both seem like good ideas when
you're hungry, and both taste great -- at least to start. But after
you're done, you might feel vaguely dissatisfied, and at the very least
you'll have an awful lot of paper -- much of which is strewn with brand
names -- to dispose of.
And yet, and yet. Sure, you know pretty much what's going to
happen from the very first page. And sure, the characters are
comfortable stereotypes, the settings are as familiar as the faithful
golden arches themselves, and the language is post-modern campfire-ese.
King even brings back characters and plot devices like Mickey D's brings
back McRibs: they're never gone long enough for us to really miss them.
But still. Can't get enough of 'em, right? Neither can the
Phantom, who's been a King phan since early on, and has yet to read a
novel or short story that he didn't like -- at least a little. For the
most part, though, he's liked them quite a lot, and he's always eager to
flex his eye muscles (and his biceps, given the physical -- if not
literary -- heft of King's recent efforts) on the latest from America's
favorite horror writer.
An odd way to begin a review of MISERY, you might say. But the
Phantom found as he left the theater that MISERY the film is a lot like
one of King's novels. Although we never *should* be surprised by
anything that happens, we are. And although James Caan gives a
perfunctory performance as Paul Sheldon, we're able to overlook it. And
finally, although we must, as the credits roll, admit to ourselves that
MISERY really isn't much of a horror film, we must also admit that it
was, nonetheless, expertly made, beautifully photographed, and very,
very enjoyable.
More than anyone else, Rob Reiner seems to have the best idea of
what a Stephen King novel *feels* like. When he turned King's short
story, "The Body", into STAND BY ME, even non-King phans stood up and
took notice. But those who *were* King phans, and who had suffered
through countless bad adaptations of his novels, rejoiced. Here,
finally, was some relief from films like CAT'S EYE, and MAXIMUM
OVERDRIVE (especially MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE), CHRISTINE, GRAVEYARD SHIFT,
and even to some extent THE SHINING (which, while it is a fine horror
film in its own right, bears as much resemblance to a Stephen King novel
as Stephen King bears to a competent film director) -- films which bore
greater or lesser resemblance to the stories from which they were
adapted, but which *felt* nothing at all like them. (Did the Phantom
mention MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE?)
It's that feeling of familiarity, that feeling of settling down
around a campfire to hear a ripping good yarn -- and one that you know
will keep you awake until the wee hours of the night -- that is usually
missing from the films made out of King's novels and short stories.
Even THE SHINING, while technically excellent and quite scary enough,
was, however, coldly impersonal and distant -- just the opposite of
King's novel, which got you right inside the haunted Overlook and the
mind of its demented caretaker.
But although horror may be neither Rob Reiner nor William Goldman's
forte, spinning ripping good yarns most certainly is. The team who just
three years ago brought us the lightweight but entertaining PRINCESS
BRIDE have collaborated once again and produced the equally lightweight
(at least from a horror standpoint) but equally entertaining MISERY.
And when it comes down to it, after you strip away the blood and gore,
the evil clowns and giant spiders, the rabid dogs and 1950's space
aliens, a Stephen King novel sets out from the very first page to
entertain us. And although it becomes apparent after only a half hour
that Rob Reiner doesn't really want to scare us very much, it's clear
from the very first frame that he wants to spin us a yarn -- he wants to
keep us entertained.
In that, MISERY is a resounding success. As a horror film, and as
an adaptation of one of King's best novels, it's somewhat of a mixed
bag. The novel MISERY was entertaining, of course, and in many ways it
was a comfortable and familiar King novel, just like the dozens that had
preceded it (and presumably like the hundreds that would follow). But
it was also a bit of a departure for King, for this novel had no band of
outcast kids; no ghosts or aliens or evil forces ; no apocalyptic battle
between the forces of good and evil; no cast of thousands. Instead,
MISERY had just two main characters, locked for almost the entire novel
in a battle of wits, a battle which only one could survive. MISERY is
King's most claustrophobic novel, and one of the most difficult horror
novels to read. The sense of impending violence, doom, and insanity is
almost unbearable, and King puts us right in the room with his alter
ego, the horror novelist Paul Sheldon. Sheldon, you see, makes the
mistake of getting into a near-fatal car accident and then getting
"rescued" by his "number one fan," Annie Wilkes, a woman who isn't quite
sane and who doesn't always make a lot of sense. In other words, a
woman who would find herself quite at home in a Hollywood production
meeting.
Annie is also a great phan of Misery Chastain, the heroine of
Sheldon's trashy romance novel series. Although she sets out at first
to help Paul recuperate from his accident (though all the while
preventing him from leaving or getting in touch with anyone in the
outside world), she soon finishes reading his latest (and last) entry in
the "Misery" series. And she discovers that Paul, in order to free
himself from the creation that had threatened to prevent him from
writing "serious" literature forever, had killed Misery off at the end
of the novel, thus hoping to put the series to rest once and for all.
Unfortunately, the only thing Sheldon put to rest was any hope he
might have had of leaving Annie's secluded house before the spring thaw.
Upon finding that Paul killed her heroine -- her "perfect, perfect"
heroine -- Annie flies into a rage and nearly kills Paul before deciding
that instead of killing him he should redeem himself by writing a new
"Misery" novel and returning his most perfect of heroines to its adoring
public. The rest of the novel is a tense, claustrophobic battle between
Paul and Annie, with enough violence sprinkled throughout to keep even
the most bloodthirsty of King's phans satisfied.
But the emphasis of the novel, for all its descriptions of mangled
legs and kitchen knives, is on Paul and his desperate attempt to escape
from Annie. In the process, King gets us inside the minds of both
characters, and as we begin to empathize with Paul, we begin to feel
more and more like we, too, are trapped in the bedroom, helplessly
awaiting Annie's next violent outburst. That's one of the things that
makes MISERY so difficult to read, and one of the things that makes it a
little different from King's other novels. Instead of shifting the
action and point of view between a dozen or so major characters, King
keeps the action, points of view, and story focused in that one bedroom,
and forces us to go through everything with Paul -- whether we want to
or not.
And that's really the problem with MISERY, the film. Although it
is quite faithful to the novel, and although Kathy Bates seems as born
to the role of Annie Wilkes as Anthony Perkins is to the role of Norman
Bates, Reiner never gets us to feel that same degree of terror and
claustrophobia; in fact, we don't even see things from Paul's point of
view with any degree of consistency. Reiner opened MISERY up a little,
but as a result it seems that we spend nearly as much time with the
sheriff and his wife as we do with Paul and Annie. It's almost as if
every time Reiner felt that the audience might be squirming a little
*too* much in their seats, he deliberately pulled back and eased up on
the tension. In both the novel and the film, Annie is portrayed as
being quite insane, but Reiner makes her nearly as funny as she is
scary; on more than a few occasions, we get to laugh at her expense.
But it's laughter without a payoff, since we're laughing to escape from
whatever tension might have been building. King never let us escape
that way, but except for two or three specific scenes, Reiner does.
Another problem with MISERY is James Caan's performance. It might
be a limitation of Goldman's script; it might be Reiner's direction; or
it might be Caan's inability to make us feel what his character is
feeling; but we, as the audience, never really begin to empathize with
Paul. Oh sure, we all cringe when Annie threatens to hurt Paul, but
that's more a visceral reaction than true empathy. What's missing from
MISERY is exactly what made HENRY so good: a performance like the one
that Michael Rooker gave, one that breaks down the barrier between
character and audience. In HENRY, we felt for a brief while what being
a sociopathic killer was like; but in MISERY, we rarely, if at all, feel
what it must be like to be trapped in bed and held captive by a
madwoman.
And yet, and yet. Remember that the Phantom said that MISERY
really *felt* like a King novel? Well it does, although sadly that
novel is not MISERY. But for all its problems, MISERY is, like a good
King novel, completely captivating from beginning to end. It forgoes
any chance of being a full-tilt horror film, but if it's seen neither as
a strict adaptation of King's novel nor a serious horror film, MISERY
works just fine. It works for the same reason that many of King's
novels work: because it is out and out entertaining, regardless of
whatever problems an audience might have with it.
Of course, MISERY isn't necessarily family entertainment, even
though the Phantom doesn't believe that it has its heart set on horror.
There are enough violent scenes to keep all but the most hard-core
horror phan -- or phan of the novel -- satisfied. And when Reiner
decides to let Ms. Bates loose, it is simply impossible to take your
eyes off the screen or your nails out of your mouth. We're even willing
to forgive the old "Oh no! The car's almost in the driveway" routines
and a pretty fair SLC quotient. Reiner can be forgiven for this, since
as the Phantom has said, he's new to the horror game, and it's really
not his type of film. On the other hand, his direction is always crisp
and the editing is first rate. It's a tribute to Reiner's skill that he
can throw in tilted camera shots, shots of a full moon, thunder and
lightning just before something bad happens, and a dozen other tried and
true horror film cliches -- and make them all work (or at least keep us
from realizing that they're cliches until after the credits roll). And
there are moments when it's obvious that he's gotten right into the
spirit of things; at least a half-dozen times throughout the film, it's
as if Reiner has forgotten that he just set out to spin an entertaining
yarn, rather than direct a full-tilt horror film. On those occasions,
he gets the camera right up into Paul and Annie's (especially Annie's)
faces, and he really lets Kathy Bates go to town. And for just a while
we are treated to some truly scary scenes. But inevitably the scenes
end all too quickly, and usually without much of a payoff, and we're
back to MISERY: THE CAMPFIRE STORY rather than MISERY: THE HORROR FILM.
So, phans, when it comes down to the final analysis, MISERY is
quite good, and it stands as one of the better adaptations of one of
King's novels (which isn't, of course, saying much), though it's really
not too much of a horror film itself. But if you don't go into it
expecting the atmosphere that King labored so hard to create or the
tension and claustrophobia that pervaded his novel, the Phantom thinks
you'll find it well worth seeing. In fact, it's worth seeing if for no
reason other than to see Kathy Bates' truly lunatic performance.
Lunatic performances are all too rare these days, and the Phantom thinks
that Bates' Annie Wilkes makes Chucky look like Charlie McCarthy in
comparison. And that should be reason enough for a horror phan to check
out MISERY before it leaves the theaters and heads for a very
un-rightful resting place between copies of LIFEFORCE and MY BLOODY
VALENTINE on the horror shelves of Blockbusters nationwide. It may not
be a great horror film, but it deserves *much* better company than that.
: The Phantom : baumgart@esquire.dpw.com :
{cmcl2,uunet}!esquire!baumgartleeper@mtgzy.att.com (Mark R. Leeper) (12/12/90)
MISERY
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Rob Reiner had a real coup casting
unknown Kathy Bates as Annie Wilks in MISERY. But it wasn't
good enough to save this from being his most unpleasant and
least exceptional film. There are sparks of wit but they do
not kindle much warmth. Rating; high 0 (-4 to +4).
Stephen King showed up as advertised at a World Fantasy Convention I
attended in Ottawa. I have a review copy of CARRIE I found cheap in a used
bookstore and I thought this would be a good opportunity to get it
autographed. I had no idea the investment of time it would require. The
limit was three books per person and even with that limit King could have
easily spent twelve hours straight just autographing books for his fans.
But the number was not so amazing as the fervor of some of his fans. Some
fans scouted at the front of the line to find people who were holding fewer
than three books and who could be coerced into getting someone else's book
autographed. Now recognize, King is only a reasonably competent writer.
But he is a celebrity and every celebrity seems to have a cult of admirers
in which a fair percentage carry their adulation to the point of being
nuisances. Martin Scorsese's KING OF COMEDY shows not too unrealistically
the fervor of some fans, including King's.
That King knows the extremities of what fans will do and uses it as the
basis of a book is hardly surprising. What is a little more surprising is
that King would, knowingly or not, combine the idea with a plot that had
previously been done on NIGHT GALLERY. In the "Marmalade Wine" episode a
man, played by Robert Morse, takes refuge from a storm in the secluded house
of a lonely surgeon, played by Rudy Vallee. The surgeon seems only too
pleased to have a guest he can care for. The visitor finds himself drugged
and wakes to the surgeon cheerfully informing him, "I've taken the liberty
of amputating your feet. Have some oatmeal." (There are further plot
parallels, but revealing them would be a MISERY spoiler.)
Well, there you have the basic plot of Rob Reiner's adaptation of the
Stephen King novel MISERY. James Caan plays Paul Sheldon, author of eight
melodramatic books about a heroine named Misery. He mangles himself in a
car accident in a Colorado snowstorm and awakes to find himself in the
overly loving care of his self-professed "Number One Fan," Annie Wilks.
Kathy Bates plays Nurse Wilks, who refuses to share her patient with any
hospital and instead cares for him attentively in her own home. Wilks takes
the occasion to read the eighth book about Misery. When the Number One Fan
finds out Sheldon has killed off Misery, the number two really hits the fan.
Sheldon will be held a prisoner until he writes a novel resurrecting Misery.
Wilks flashes from adulation to rage to depression. Bates's combination of
winning child-like innocence and monstrous menace--perhaps not so far
apart--is really what makes the film tick. Caan's flat performance goes
almost unnoticed next to Bates. Richard Farnsworth and Frances Sternhagen
as a husband and wife sheriff and deputy have some chemistry but not enough
screen time really to show it.
It seems as if every popular lead actor in Hollywood will eventually be
cast as "the good cop" in an action film and every director in Hollywood
will eventually direct a Stephen King horror film. Maybe it only seems that
way. But MISERY is certainly Rob Reiner's least remarkable film to date.
It is hard to imagine that MISERY is from the same director who made has a
very distinguished set of films including THE SURE THING and THE PRINCESS
BRIDE. Reiner seems to have been gambling very heavily on Kathy Bates's
performance to set this film apart and make it a Reiner film. Bates was
good but not that good.
In the end MISERY is a very minor horror film not too different from
DEAD OF WINTER or several others. My rating would be a high 0 on the -4 to
+4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
att!mtgzy!leeper
leeper@mtgzy.att.com