Idle Hands

Oh, man. This movie does not make it easy on itself to be reviewed. So, the first half of this movie plays like a weird mix of stoner comedy and body horror movie. I've never heard of such a thing. It's clever. Certainly unique. The idea of a disconnected doofus not seeing the horror around him isn't unique, but it's accomplished here by making Devon Sawa's character a lazy jackass who is perpetually stoned. He has no ambition beyond getting stoned, watching TV and admiring from afar his neighbor, Jessica Alba, who is perpetually in coquette mode (more on this later). Because of this, he doesn't notice the string of murders in town. Or the murders of his parents. Or the blood around his house. It's all background noise ... until the clues become too obvious to ignore. And that's when his hand comes alive, cursed due to his laziness, to do the devil's work. This results in some absolutely MANIC slapstick on the part of Sawa, and it is magnificent to watch. The way he throws his body around as it's led by the hand is masterful, and to put it to use in a way that balances horror and comedy is a touch of genius. But once Sawa cuts off his hand, the movie loses everything that made it fun. Without Sawa's excellent slapstick, the movie has to rely on the characters. There's a couple laughs to be had -- it's not entirely barren -- but the beating heart of the movie is gone. The two stoner buddies are stock characters at best, and it's only the twists put upon them by being undead that generate any laughs. Viveca Fox is wasted as a representative of some ancient order of somethings that protect against this curse, a role that gets NO backstory or explanation or context. It's just there. The meathead neighbor, similarly, is half a note of a character. Other side characters are brought up and killed off without any sort of investment, in the worst form of slasher movie cliché ever. Jessica Alba's best friend might as well not even be human, for all the depth she's given. And that goes back to writing, which is at the heart of just about this entire movie's problems. Jessica Alba meets Devon Sawa, and after a rather aggressive slap on the ass, kisses him (?!?); when his demon hand almost strangles her during it, he ties it off, and she writes it off as kinky and has sex with him. THIS IS THEIR FIRST MEETING. And when her parents come home, she suggests he leave by saying "I don't think they need to meet the guy who just banged their daughter". NOBODY TALKS LIKE THIS. Alba is pretty much a living sex-doll, alternately the girl next door, the cool rock chick, the horny teenager, the playful flirt and the sexpot, all in one wish-fulfillment package, and it's GROSS. And it's not just her; a scene later has the disembodied hand kill off a pair of characters having sex in a car at the dance. Who are these characters? Other than being KISS fans (they're made up as members of the band), who knows. They have no names. They're introduced and killed in under five minutes. This scene exists for two reasons: they needed to up the body count, and they needed to show some tits, and since Jessica Alba doesn't do nudity (and may have bene underage during filming?), this scene is shoehorned into the movie. While I enjoy boobs as much as the next hetero guy, and as much as Kelly Monaco (the doomed topless girl) is a certifiable knockout, she and her boobs add nothing to this movie whatsoever. I'd say Viveca Fox is the only female to get away without sexualization, but hey, she gets molested during CPR and they make sure to have her braless during it, so her nipples poke through! And after defeating the evil hand, she grabs the meathead she doesn't know for celebratory "ritualistic sex"! I need a shower, and this movie needs to sit in a corner and think about what its done. More problems with the writing? The rules of this universe. Sawa has the idle hands curse because he is lazy. Fine. He kills four people before the movie begins and remembers none of it. Wait, what? Does the curse cause amnesia? I've been stoned, and I can tell you that there isn't a strain of marijuana in the world strong enough that I could commit four murders and remember none of it ... so, either he has access to the world's strongest drugs, or the curse has amnesiac properties that it drops as soon as the movie needs him to. It's almost certainly the latter, because the movie is also inconsistent with when and how the hand is in control of itself. Sometimes, it's in full control and literally dragging him around the world, and sometimes, he can use it without any issue. The curse's rules seem to be "whatever the scene needs". And then there's the issue of his buddies; he kills them early on, and they come back from the dead. Why? They decided not to go into the light. I've never been dead, but I'm reasonably sure that's not now it works. What makes this doubly stupid is that, later on, Sawa dies, but refuses to go into the light, and he is CLEARLY alive. So, why did his buddies die and come back as undead, but he stayed alive? The movie does not care to explain itself. It hand-waives aside anything it wants to, assuming it doesn't lampshade it, like the ending. It's so unsatisfying and sudden, the movie itself even calls it out. At no point has the movie been self-aware, so this sudden meta-moment is unearned at best, and insulting at worst; you can't just call it out for being bad while doing it and think that allows you to get away with it. It sounds like I'm harsh on this movie, like I hated it. I didn't. It's got a great first half (Jessica Alba's bad character not withstanding). But the minute the hand is cut off, the movie's enjoyment is goes with it, and the flaws are suddenly laid very bare, and you can see how the flaws extend through even the best parts. I can't even say "product of the time", because I can't think of another movie of the time that treats women so bizarrely and sexualizes them in such a peculiar, diminutive way. There are funny moments to be had here, but you have to sit through some rough stuff during and afterward, and it may be more offensive than you want to deal with.