12 SEPTEMBER, 2000: This summer’s movies were a lot like a visit to one of the second-tier strip clubs, like Babes or Lookers: Not altogether bad, just nothing too exciting. (Not that I go to those places, I’ve just heard that… oh, never mind). I was entertained, to be sure, and saw some funny movies, I just wasn’t knocked back on my ass very often. ‘The Cell’ knocked me on my ass. So did ‘The Virgin Suicides’, and the new ‘Hamlet’, and (in its summer blockbuster way), ‘The Perfect Storm’, and for sheer laughs, ‘The Original Kings of Comedy’.

The following movies did not suck: ‘Gladiator’, ‘Mission: Impossible 2’, ‘Timecode’, ‘Jesus’ Sun’, ‘Me, Myself & Irene’, ‘Shaft’, ‘The Filth & The Fury’, ‘Scary Movie’, ‘Croupier’, and ‘X-Men’. ‘Coyote Ugly’ and ‘Bring It On’ were bad movies, but they had hot girls in them, so all is forgiven.

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‘Hollow Man’ sucks. Sucks on ice. Sucks on toast. Sucks right out loud. Seldom in recent memory has a movie presented us with such a dull, unlikable group of people doing such uninteresting things. Paul Verhoeven directed, showcasing the complex characters and strong dialogue we’d expect from the man behind ‘Showgirls’ and ‘Starship Troopers’. I have a friend who loved ‘Starship Troopers’ (and he’s still my friend, which I think speaks volumes for my tolerance and patience) and even he said he can’t remember the last time he disliked a movie so much.

‘Hollow Man’ is the story of Kevin Bacon and how he needs to be in better movies. He plays Dr. Sebastian Asshole, a brilliant but self-centered scientist; others on his crack team include Elisabeth Shue and Josh Brolin. Yeah, and Keanu Reeves could be a brilliant serial killer. Anyway, he and his team of uninteresting character actors have developed an invisibility serum (or some such unconvincing scientific shit; the physics in ‘Nutty Professor II’ were more convincing) and they make a dog disappear, but Bacon doesn’t tell the Boardroom Full of Congressional Guys that they’ve succeeded, because he wants to “be the first” or something, which is unfortunate because otherwise the movie could end and we could all sneak next door and see that wet T-shirt scene in ‘Coyote Ugly’ again.

So Bacon gets invisible, and then they can’t bring him back, so he starts sneaking out of the underground lab, which looks like one of those sets Roger Corman would get for a weekend and build a movie around. Most of the movie takes place there, though, which seems strange for a movie that cost, from my understanding, something like 400 gajillion dollars. At any rate, once he’s out of the Ed Wood Labs, the first thing he does as an invisible man is sneak into his hot neighbor’s apartment so he can look at her naked. Don’t get me wrong, this is first goddamn thing I’d do if I was invisible, but that’s why they’re not making movies about me.

Back at the labs, the cardboard scientists (the greatest collective of brains in a movie since those genuises in ‘Deep Blue Sea’) get together and whine because he could ruin the experiment, or their careers, or something. Here’s where the movie really starts to go off the tracks, because Shue and Brolin and the others are presented as a bunch of whiny bastards that there’s no one left to root for. We sure don’t like them, and Bacon is not only a prick, but he turns out to be a rapist (I think; this part is presented so awkwardly, with no follow-up whatsoever, that we’re not really sure) and, of course, a killer. So we have a second half where we he kills the actors who weren’t well-paid and we just kinda look at the screen and don’t give a shit. And just when you think it can’t get worse, it does. The ending could have been proceeded by the first two hours of ‘Goodfellas’ and it still would have been a fucking turd. ‘Hollow Man’ is a big piece of shit that made a lot of money because it promised mindless effects and boobs. And it certainly delivered that, and absolutely positively nothing else.

By the way, Bob Curtright gave ‘Hollow Man’ three stars, which, in glancing over his recent star ratings, would make it better than ‘Magnolia’, ‘The Limey’, and ‘Dogma’. Just in case you’re interested.

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Amanda Peet first caught my eye on a girly (but okay) show on the WB called ‘Jack & Jill’, but I really took notice of her in February’s ‘The Whole Nine Yards’, which she stole from it’s marquee stars with her infectous energy, crack timing, and great body. This girl’s gonna be a star, I thought to myself.

Now she’s in a new movie called ‘Whipped’ and while I’m still sure she’ll be a star, bile like this isn’t gonna help. ‘Whipped’ feels like exactly what it is: an amateurish independent film, shot a couple of years back, released only because its lead went on to bigger and better things. Watching it, Peet must feel like Leo DiCaprio does when those ‘Growing Pains’ reruns come on. She comes out of the thing relatively unscathed: She looks great, and does what she can, but like my old granddaddy used to say, if you shit out a diamond, it’s still a diamond in a piece of shit. Or something like that.

The movie is about writer/director Peter M. Cohen and how he wants to be Neil LaBute. He pens the story of four assholes, two of them players, one of them sensitive, one of the married, and how they meet every Sunday at the Barry Levinson diner and eat flapjacks and lie to each other about women. You gotta get a look at these guys to see how the whole movie falls apart before Peet can even make an entrance. One guy, Brad, is a stock broker and looks like a frat boy so we believe that he could get laid. Then there’s a second guy who weights like 83 pounds and looks like Josh Saviano from ‘The Wonder Years’. He gets poon all the time, we’re told. Uh huh. Then there’s a third guy who weights like 82 pounds and is supposed to be an artist or something, and the big running joke is that he jerks off all the time, and uses the name of the lotion as the name of the woman he brags he was with. Ho, ho. Then there’s the married guy, who twitches and blinks and talks in a strained voice and does his absolute best to convince us that he’s never been funny in his life, ever ever ever. And the three single guys all meet Peet separately and they all fall for her and their friendships are threatened and they yell at each other a lot and blah blah fuckin blah.

I should mention that there is a scene about halfway through ‘Whipped’ where the sensitive guy takes a big long piss (funny!) and then opens her medicine cabinet to find her vibrator. He then takes it out and turns it on and starts to play with and dance with it to Culture Club’s ‘Karma Chameleon’ (I swear to Christ, I couldn’t make this up if I tried) and then it slips out of his hand (wacky!) and goes—you guessed it—into the unflushed toilet (you’re killin’ me!). And then he has to reach in after it, and he smells like piss, and Peet wonders why.

This is the worst fucking scene you will see in any movie this year. In fact, it might very well turn out to be the worst THING you will see this year. Maybe you should see it, just so you can take a big sigh after that scene and say ‘Well, glad I got that over with!’ and then sneak next door and see that wet T-shirt scene in ‘Coyote Ugly’ again.

Sometimes natural selection works. Though ‘Hollow Man’ made money, ‘Whipped’ was gone in two weeks—the opening weekend Sunday matinee had a total of four other people in attendance, and two of them left about twenty minutes in. I will confess to laughing a few times during the movie, mostly towards the beginning because I like Amanda Peet and really WANTED the movie to be good. But like my old graddaddy used to say, you can want in one hand and crap in the other, and see which one has ‘Whipped’ in it. Or something like that.