Idle Hands Review
by Susan Granger (Ssg722 AT aol DOT com)May 6th, 1999
http://www.speakers-podium.com/susangranger.
Susan Granger's review of "IDLE HANDS" (Columbia Pictures/Sony Releasing)
In the light of the tragic high-school massacre in Littleton, Colorado, this ill-timed horror-comedy is so ghoulish and repulsive that there's no excuse for it. Frankly, I think it should be voluntarily withdrawn by the studio. But, since it's on the screen in local theaters, here goes. Devon Sawa plays a vapid, pot-smoking 17 year-old whose hand becomes possessed by a murderous evil spirit. "Idle hands are the devil's playpen" is the explanation he's given. He kills his parents and many of those unlucky enough to be around him until he cuts off the homicidal appendage with a meat cleaver and microwaves it. First-time screenwriters Teri Hughes and Ron Milbauer and director Rodman Flender (TV's "Dawson's Creek," "Chicago Hope") devise numerous grisly, blood-drenched deaths and manage to have greenish corpses rise from the dead to become devilish, wise-cracking zombies. Then there's Viveca A. Fox, supposedly descended from a long line of Druid priestesses, who arrives in town with her sacred dagger. Plus Sawa's girl-friend, Jessica Alba, and the other freaked-out guests at a Halloween costume party who are doomed for disaster. The most offensive scene, however, pokes fun at the mourners at the funeral of two youngsters. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Idle Hands" is barely a distasteful, disgusting 1 - and definitely not for the squeamish. If this is what teenagers want as entertainment, as a society, we're in deeper trouble than we realize.
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