Big Trouble

Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
With: Tim Allen, Rene Russo

Rating: Loved it.

Barry Sonnenfeld is a pretty patchy director.

The "Addams Family" films are nothing short of the work of a master at the top of his form. "Get Shorty" is probably better. On the other hand, "Wild Wild West" and "Men in Black" are pretty seriously bad films. They don't aim very high, and they hit their target perfectly. Apparently the sort of people who wear a bib to eat popcorn like them immensely, though, so I should not carp. After all, one must eat.

Patchy is one thing, invisible is another. I had never even HEARD of "Big Trouble" when the slick was shown to me at the video shop. It was rented anyway, I am happy to say. And, I am happy to say, far from being a bad film swept under the carpet, "Big Trouble" is a very good film, that has suffered some very bad luck.

The first ten seconds of "Big Trouble" were apparently deeply religious. Well, they sure as hell looked deeply religious. The next twenty seconds were not exactly what I expected. I'm not saying that I expected much, but the one thing that I did not bargain on was to examine the carpet up really close while screaming with laughter. Maybe recent world events made me in need of a laugh. Maybe the character in question reminded me of someone whom I know. That might be it. Maybe, what does it matter? A really good laugh is a hard thing to drag out of me. "Big Trouble" went in with both boots on and scored a goal within the first minute.

And kept right on doing it, on the average of one big hard laugh every two or three minutes. About twenty minutes in, I found myself squawking that the person who did the editing was a genius. Twenty-five minutes saw me praising the script, then the actors, the director, and somewhat later, the herd of goats. I gave up. "Big Trouble" is just funny. Funny is probably the hardest thing to quantify and the hardest thing to actually do. The film did it and made me laugh harder than I have in a long time. That alone is worth a series of accolades to everyone concerned, including the goats.

I can't be bothered typing out the plot synopsis, it exists on the video slick, and in places on the web. Suffice to say that it is similar in tone and general subject matter to "Get Shorty" but is a broader, and occasionally much drier satire than that film. If you liked "Get Shorty" you will almost undoubtedly love "Big Trouble."

A couple of quick points. This film has a simply wonderful script. I imagine that the script was workshopped to perfection by the actors involved, but the original work must have been very good to start with. The twists in the plot, and the endless succession of broad accurate satiric characters are not the sort of things which can be workshopped. The late(?) addition of narration makes an extremely complicated story more funny than it would have been without. Simply, the narration alone lifts the film from funny, to wonderful.

I had never heard of this film. That fact alone made me very dubious about any quality it may have had. It is likely that you have never heard of it either, and are treating these jabberings of mine as some sort of hymn to the talents of Tim Allen or some such. Let me put your mind at rest. The film was made during 2001. It devotes large series of rather evil jokes to the subject of worthless airport security and the ease with which things, really nasty things, can be smuggled onto airplanes. I don't think that I have to remind you or September 11, 2001 for you to be able to put the facts together and see why the film may have been somewhat under publicised on its release. Those jokes were just intended to be funny. Nowadays, jokes like that are very black indeed.

And just exactly, precisely, what I was in the mood for.

Rating: Top stuff.

(C)opyright Alex Rieneck, 2006.