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No Huxley for This Movie
By bukkhead | August 13, 2007
FILM REVIEW: ‘THE DARWIN AWARDS’
Written and Directed by Finn Taylor
Rated R
90 mins.
I don’t know that I much care for the so-called Darwin Awards, which are about alleged acts of stupidity. Most of the stories ring false to me, and sound more like urban legends. Then there’s the snob appeal of it all, that any of us are above these acts—in my mind, the only difference between award recipients, and the rest of us, is that the rest of us have been lucky. Call them the unlucky awards. And this whole notion of people removing themselves from the gene pool: that only works if the person has never had kids, or nephews, or cousins, for that matter.
So I should trust my instincts. Nevertheless, I was intrigued by the idea of the movie when heard about it. Michael Burrows is a San Francisco homicide profiler, fired for letting a serial killer get away. He applies for a job as an insurance claim adjustor, attempting to use his profiling skills to determine what leads people to kill themselves in the style of the Darwin Awards.
The movie is in some ways just a collection of some of the more famous stories. There’s the one about the guy who tries to blow a hole in the ice of a pond with dynamite, only to have his dog “fetch” the stick back to him. There’s the one about the guy who straps a jet engine to the back of his car, to see how fast he can go. In each case, the movie slips and slides around, trying to find an angle. Like I said, the Darwin Awards are so supposed to make us feel superior right? Sometimes we’re shown goofy idiots acting the fool. Other times were led to somehow feel sorry for frustrated individuals just trying to achieve some kind if meaning in their lives.
Taped on to the whole collection is the remaining theme of Burrows trying to crack the case on the serial killer. It’s one thing to write a piece of fiction. It’s another to base that fiction on the so-called facts of the Darwin Awards. But get at least a few other things right. We’re supposed to believe that, though they have the killers face on film, he still remains at large, in the city, undisguised, continuing his murder spree?
This is one of those movies that tries to be do too many things at the same time and does none of them well. I can’t even say you’ll enjoy all of the cameos, from David Arquette to Lukas Haas to Chris Penn, since Director Finn Taylor just doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing—the auteur’s curse, if you ask me. Which is too bad, because Joseph Fiennes and even Winona Ryder might have been a reason good enough to watch the film. Unfortunetly, their left to their own devices, and there’s not much to get out of a more famous actor’s younger brother (No, I didn’t like Shakespeare in Love, not at all) and an ex-con.
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