Idle Hands (1999)

Review

“As usual, marijuana saves an otherwise disastrous day,” exclaims a character at one point in Rodman Flender’s "Idle Hands". Indeed, marijuana may have saved their day, but it certainly doesn’t save this movie. There are two reasons I decided to watch this film: 1) I was bored, tired, and it was on. 2) It has the enjoyable Seth Green in it. With these criteria in mind, it was a reasonably entertaining film. But holding it up to the higher standards of the horror-comedy genre, "Idle Hands" doesn’t make the grade.

The film opens with promise. A middle-aged couple gets in bed, talk briefly about their lazy son Anton, and then turn off the light. Then the wife screams. On their ceiling in glowing blue tape reads “I am under the bed.” I won’t go into any details, but needless to say, both of these people end up dead. The lighting in this opening sequence is also quite eerie, reminding me of Mario Bava’s “The Drop of Water” from his film "Black Sabbath" (1963). But after this promising open, Idle Hand takes a turn for the worse.

We meet the lazy son, Anton (Devon Sawa) who has dropped out of school in order to smoke more pot and watch TV. His two best friends, Mick and Pnumb (Seth Green and Elden Henson) are about as lazy as Anton, save that they still go to school. Anton also pines after the cute neighborhood girl, Molly (Jessica Alba) but is too shy to talk with her. This of course, is all rudimentary comic set up –losers try to find a way to hook up with a hot girl. But Idle Hands has a twist. You see, it turns out Anton has been so lazy that the devil has possessed his right hand and now that hand kills people without the consent or control of Anton. Thus with the rudimentary comic set up combined with the evil murdering hand, we are supposed to have a comic-horror movie. Unfortunately the movie proves far too uneven.

Idle Hands would have done better with its content if it had stuck to either comedy or horror. As a comedy, there is only so far a murdering hand can take you for laughs. As a horror film, the secret is out too early that Anton’s hand is the killer. It does not allow for the gap in knowledge that makes a scene or a movie really scary. The only consistently good aspect of this film is a non-sequitor of a decision. Anton kills his friends Mick and Pnub very early in the movie. But they somehow come back from the dead after refusing to go to heaven. Seth Green and Elden Henson steal the show by simply becoming stoner zombies who frolic through the film completely aware of their undead nature, and yet not caring. They are the spirit of comedy-horror in this film. Not the hand.

Oh yes, and Vivica A. Fox plays a secret priestess who’s life mission is to kill devil possessed hands. This role is a Tarantino-character wannabe and proves it. So on the whole, "Idle Hands" is harmless drivel that might have been more. I suppose thats the fate of a lot of films though.


Rating:

On a scale of one to Casablanca this film is a "Jurassic Park 3"

Sometimes you just watch a film and ask "Why? Why?!" and often times if you've watched a film long enough to ask that monosyllabic question, you realize there is some potential brimming under the surface. If there's no potential in a film, you've probably turned it off long before you could even formulate an exasperated question about the film. I didn't turn off "Idle Hands." Nay, I watched the entire thing, and even did laugh on occasion. But in the end, the experience left me feeling like I had watched nothing but a missed opportunity to be better.