Rated PG-13 - Running Time: 1:23 - Released 6/1/01
THE ANIMAL
Rated PG-13 - Running Time: 1:23 - Released 6/1/01
Is is just me, or does it seem like Rob Schneider is trying
to star in the most idiotic movies on the market? The Animal,
co-written by Schneider and Tom Brady and directed by Luke Greenfield,
is at least as bad as Schneider's 1999 starring debut,
Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo,
putting the ex-Saturday Night Live cast member in more
demeaning situations and offering the same brain-dead screenwriting
as that movie. The film's one saving grace is Schneider's co-star,
ex-Survivor Colleen Haskell, the first veteran of that
inexplicably popular television show to land a role in a feature
film. Haskell, who has her cute meter set on full, is an adequate
love interest (although occasionally gets a little too sugary
in her characterization), but why her character would fall for
Schneider's is beyond any reasonable explanation.
Schneider plays the exact same kind of character as in Deuce
Bigalow: a wimp with a heart of gold. Working as an evidence
file clerk for the Elkerton police department, where he doesn't
even command respect from school children on a tour, Marvin Mange
is berated by his superior, Sgt. Sisk (John C. McGinley), and
tolerated by the department chief (Edward Asner, in a stunning
career move). But he hopes to change all that by succeeding in
his upcoming fourth try at the department's obstacle course and
thereby finally winning his badge. Life changes, however, when
Marvin is found after a bad car accident and operated on by a
mad scientist (Michael Caton), who saves him by performing a "radical
trans-species-ectomy" (implanting animal parts in his body).
Although he doesn't remember the operation at first, Marvin suddenly
finds that he can perform all sorts of animalistic feats, like
outrunning a horse or smelling drugs on people at an airport.
This not only wins him fame as Elkerton's "supercop"
(and a place on the force), but the love and admiration of local
animal lover Rianna Humbert Holt (Haskell), who seems to take
his frequent animalistic behavior in stride. But when Marvin starts
having trouble controlling his bestial impulses, he runs the risk
of getting himself, Rianna, and the good doctor in trouble.
This film, which is co-produced by Schneider's SNL cohort Adam Sandler (and, of course, features Sandler in a cameo appearance), is rich with the kind of mind-numbing stupidity we have seen not only in Bigalow but in several of Sandler's recent vehicles. A few examples are an animal lover who can't pronounce "orangutan" and a script that doesn't know the difference between "musky" and "musty." But Schneider must be commended for his willingness to make himself a complete fool, energetically transforming himself into such things as a horse, a dog, a goat, a dolphin, and a monkey, among other things. And, as I mentioned, Haskell at least manages a characterization that is likable if occasionally too saccharine for her own good. If I laughed once during this film, however, I would never admit it in public. *½