Hush Review
by Craig Roush (kinnopio AT execpc DOT com)March 9th, 1998
HUSH
Release Date: March 6, 1998
Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Johnathon Schaech, Jessica Lange, Nina Foch, Hal Holbrook
Directed by: Jonathan Darby
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Entertainment / TriStar Pictures MPAA Rating: PG-13 (some violence, sensuality, brief strong language) URL: http://www.execpc.com/~kinnopio/reviews/1998/hush.htm
On an otherwise crowded movie weekend, with three other releases that are surely more promising, HUSH has to hope for viewer curiosity to make good on its terribly awry premise. Those who wander into this one will do so certainly to see either the beautiful people - Gwyneth Paltrow (GREAT EXPECTATIONS) for the guys and Johnathon Schaech (THAT THING YOU DO!) for the girls - or to see the psychotic Jessica Lange (A THOUSAND ACRES). But after word of mouth filters back to the rest of the American public, the masses will learn that HUSH is nothing but a good idea that never gets going.
Schaech and Paltrow play Jackson and Helen, a couple hopelessly in love (the two display appropriate amounts of chemistry, but this doesn't work out too well later on). Within the first thirty minutes of the movie, Jackson has taken Helen home to meet Mom (Lange), gotten her pregnant, and proposed marriage to her. Upon her acceptance of his proposal, he takes her back home to Mom to have the wedding at her place. However, things don't go exactly as planned because Mom isn't your garden-variety mother-in-law and her feelings toward Helen are less than accommodating. The movie builds on the tensions between Mom and Helen, which takes Helen through a series of increasingly dangerous encounters that climax in a painful in-home birth of her baby followed up by Mom's malevolent intents with a syringe full of morphine.
This plot, which is both familiar ground and originality (with the new cast), works only if viewers assumes certain things. First, the audience has to assume that Lange, as the mother-in-law Martha, wants to kill Helen only because she's possessive of her son. Second, the audience has to assume that Jackson is dumb enough to be on his mother's side for the entire movie and suddenly jump to Helen's defense after she spews about fifteen seconds worth of hopeful arguments. Third, the audience has to assume that only reason Helen and Jackson repeatedly return to Mom's home is the fact that spending weeks of quality time on a back country, multi-acre horse farm is an enticing ordeal. Fourth, and perhaps most inconsequential, the audience has to assume that Gwyneth Paltrow can drive a Ford Explorer over a bumpy horse pasture at blazing speeds when she's at least eight months pregnant.
Most of the characters have little or no audience likeability. Schaech, as Jackson, is dumb as a doornail, while his mother, Lange, is the bitch everyone wants to hate (fortunately, the scriptwriter made sure Mom gets what's coming to her - HUSH would've been completely disappointing if she hadn't). Paltrow is likeable as Helen, but that's only because she's the victim of society in a cast that's filled with badly characterized roles. But the most likeable is Nina Foch as Alice, Jackson's paternal grandmother. She's the only one who openly insults the cunning Martha, and when she befriends Helen, she can do no wrong. Unfortunately, one or two good performances can't salvage a movie that's already headed in the wrong direction. The entire thriller premise takes way too long to develop and the movie ends before it goes anywhere. Wait until HUSH hits the budget theaters.
FINAL AWARD FOR "HUSH": 2.0 stars - a fair movie.
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Craig Roush
[email protected]
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Kinnopio's Movie Reviews
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