Jan. 20, 2003 - 4:52 pm
this was one that was recommended to me a while back, but it took me some time to get my hands on a copy. i think with all of my talking about Charlie Kaufman, Leslie thought i needed to see this one as well. his most comedic screenplay yet. and very screwey of course.
it stars Patricia Arquette as Lila, the girl that has her entire body covered with hair (a hormonal condition) but loves the natural world. she goes to live in nature for a while because the natural world doesn't judge her for her strange appearance. but she soon gets "horny" and returns to the real world to find a man who also loves nature. she meets Tim Robbins, a neurotic scientist who is attempting to teach lab mice to eat with forks and have proper table manners. while they're out on a hike one day, they meet a feral man who was raised as an ape in the forest. they take him back to the lab to try to teach him table manners as well and they name him Puff. he adapts extraordinarily quickly (giving lectures and becoming very well read), but can't seem to stop humping everything that remotely resembles a woman.
a very funny movie overall. Lila's songs that she sings in the forest are hilarious, and just about everything involving Puff had me laughing hysterically. the funniest bit was when they're showing Puff slides of a naked woman that get more and more seductive. he's supposed to sit there and "control himself," which of course he doesn't and he starts trying to hump the slide screen over and over again. he's wearing a shock collar so the doctor keeps shocking him over and over, he flies through the air getting shocked violently, but then keeps running back to the screen and humping over and over. i think that went on for like two minutes. that was great.
sometimes dirty stupid bodily humor and idiocy works out well. and this is one of those times.