Oct 082000
 
two reels

Arrogant scientist Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) injects himself with an invisibility drug.  When he can’t reverse the process, his sanity crumbles while his team, which includes his ex (Elisabeth Shue), search for answers

An updating of the 1931 classic, The Invisible Man, the new version is as predictable as the first.  That’s not a huge problem (as it wasn’t in the original) since the fun is in the invisible action scenes and in the growing madness of the protagonist.  Also like the first, Hollow Man has some humor and a little tragedy as the invisible scientist moves about, but it is in the FX of invisibility that the film excels.  The two transformation scenes, one of a test gorilla regaining visibility and the other of Caine losing it, are spectacular.  We watch as the serum enters the gorilla’s vein and the heart fades in.  Then more blood vessels appear, then bone and muscle.  The film is filled with great FX beyond those two.  As for the characters and story, those work for most of the film.  Bacon has two successful film personas: the pleasant dimwit and the creepy guy.  Here he’s full out “creepy guy.”  There’s something wrong with him at the beginning; by the end, he’s the psycho I always knew Bacon could be.  Shue is miscast as the too nice, too forgiving scientist who goes medieval, but she is a pleasant enough presence.  With all that’s right, its hard to say what blind monkey suggested to director Paul Verhoeven (or perhaps it was to writer Andrew W. Marlowe) that the end should be a series of implausible and clichéd Slasher battles carried out by stupid people.  Let us assume that you know an invisible man whose sanity was questionable when he was visible; what’s more, you have goggles that let you see him.  Would you A. wear the goggles every waking second or B. ignore them and wander about aimlessly?  Guess which one the scientific team chose.  As soon as he disappeared, I would have sent in a rush order for an extra hundred goggles, kept three on me and placed others everywhere I might be in the next week.  The stupidity of the characters does cause a lot of amusing scenes of cobbled-together detection devices (a fire extinguisher, tossed blood), but I can’t watch any of the mayhem without thinking that none of it should be happening.  Add to that the tendency for our heroes to whap inviso-man, assume he’s dead, and then turn their back on him, and we have a dumb group of scientists who have never watched a horror film.  And they needed those horror films because the villain has picked up the Slasher-monster ability to survive anything.  Hit him with a pole, he’s fine.  Set him on fire, no problem.  Blow up the entire floor he’s on, not a scratch.

Even with that ending, I’m forced to defend Hollow Man.  Critics have savaged it because the invisible man likes naked females.  Either these critics are alien eunuchs or just don’t think the desire for nude girls should be in a serious movie.  Well, if the second, they are wrong.  If the first, before I take them to our leader, let me explain: every heterosexual male (not almost every, but every single one of us) has dreamed of being invisible for the sole purpose of standing in the girls’ locker-room.  Before stopping terrorists, getting insider trading info, or sabotaging a football team, we would use this new power to fulfill sexual fantasies.  Ignoring that is much like putting twin beds in 60s sitcom bedrooms—it’s creating a false world.  If it wasn’t on screen, I’d be shaking my head at what was and saying “why’s he doing that when he would be off sneaking in on naked woman?”  You see, there are some powers that everyone would abuse and no one should have.  And that is the heart of the Mad Scientist sub-genre.

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