This movie rains stupidity down on your head for it’s entire runtime, but doesn’t seem to be self aware about how bad it is. The characters are broad caricatures and the transformations that they make are too clumsy, too sudden, and too unbelievable. Only Adrien Brody manages, through sheer force of will, to keep a straight face while bringing this script to life and not come out looking ridiculous. Anything he is able to accomplish is razed by Forest Whitaker dousing the movie with overacting like fire from the sky, however. A case could be made that Whitaker was the only one who knew he was in an exploitation film, and that his scene chewing approach to the material was the correct one; but The Experiment is a movie that takes itself seriously and asks you to do the same. If the script was better this could have been okay. Or if the director embraced how bad the script was, like Whitaker did, this might have been a fun B-movie. As is, it pretty much sucks other than an isolated moment here and there.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Short Round: The Experiment (2010) **/*****
This movie rains stupidity down on your head for it’s entire runtime, but doesn’t seem to be self aware about how bad it is. The characters are broad caricatures and the transformations that they make are too clumsy, too sudden, and too unbelievable. Only Adrien Brody manages, through sheer force of will, to keep a straight face while bringing this script to life and not come out looking ridiculous. Anything he is able to accomplish is razed by Forest Whitaker dousing the movie with overacting like fire from the sky, however. A case could be made that Whitaker was the only one who knew he was in an exploitation film, and that his scene chewing approach to the material was the correct one; but The Experiment is a movie that takes itself seriously and asks you to do the same. If the script was better this could have been okay. Or if the director embraced how bad the script was, like Whitaker did, this might have been a fun B-movie. As is, it pretty much sucks other than an isolated moment here and there.
