Reviews

As a Bruce Campbell fan for nearly two decades, I was thrilled to have an opportunity to see his latest film on the big screen with the man himself in attendance. Unfortunately, "Man with the Screaming Brain" was itself a disappointment.

Set in Bulgaria--where the Sci-Fi Channel makes its Saturday night original films--"Man with the Screaming Brain" is a curious mix of '50s B-movie horror, body-switching comedy, violent revenge flick, and overdone slapstick with a touch of romantic reconciliation. If that doesn't make sense, well, neither does "Man with the Screaming Brain." Campbell plays a pharmaceutical company CEO who visits Bulgaria with his estranged wife in an inexplicable attempt to invest in the former Communist country's half-finished subway system. The two fall in with a former KGB agent turned cab driver, and all three ultimately meet their demise at the hands of a vengeful gypsy woman.

A local scientist (Stacy Keach) and his goofy assistant (Ted Raimi), who have developed a technique to allow tissue transplants without the possibility of rejection, steal the bodies and place a portion of the cab driver's brain into Campbell's damaged skull. Also, they put his wife's brain into a robotic body they just happen to have at hand.

Campbell escapes, and with a hastily-restitched skull and the voice of the cab driver--whose transplanted brain tissue controls the left side of his body--echoing in his head, sets off to find and kill the gypsy. (His robot wife does the same.)

But first, there's an attempt to emulate Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin's "All of Me" when Campbell's two personalities battle for dominance over a restaurant dinner. Just as he was playing his own evil hand in "Evil Dead II," Campbell is adept at making his body appear to be inhabited by more than one mind.

At times, "Screaming" comes closest to another Steve Martin film, "The Man with Two Brains," as it also takes a silly approach to '50s sci-fi clichés. However, it tries too hard for too little result, and that goes double for Ted Raimi's semi-comprehensible Bulgarian oaf, who gets entirely too much screen time. (Nothing against Raimi, it's just that he's better in smaller doses.)

In the end, it's neither outrageous (or funny) enough to satisfy as a spoof, nor is it serious enough to enjoy as a B-movie pastiche. I was glad that Campbell had already left the screening by the time it ground to a halt, as I feared having to say, "Gee, Bruce, that was really...something."

Perhaps the best praise I can give it as a film is that at least the images stuck to the emulsion. And it was twice as good as "Alien Apocalypse."

What motivated the makers of "The Family Man"? Was it a desire to recapture the earthy pleasures of Frank Capra's work? To convince the masses that our simple lives are somehow nobler than those of the rich and powerful? To market the oft-made point that true happiness can only be found between a man, a woman and their two beaming children? Or was it actual regret on the filmmakers' parts, an honest longing for roads not taken?

Well, since Nicolas Cage and Tea Leoni have not, to my knowledge, given up on their money and fame and moved to Poughkeepsie, I'm going to argue that the truth lies somewhere between the first three choices.

In "The Family Man," a Magic Black Person (see "The Legend of Bagger Vance" for another example of this cliche in action) grants Nicolas Cage's wealthy broker a glimpse of the domesticated life he'd have had if he'd pursued his relationship with his college girlfriend.

There are a several problems with this premise. First, Cage's initial character isn't, as one might expect, particularly unhappy or disliked. Although he does make his underlings work on Christmas Eve, he still appears genuinely respected at work. He seems to truly enjoy the material and carnal fruits of his high-powered career. He's not even a jerk.

Second, the alternate existence presented isn't all that appealing. Cage, quite understandably, doesn't take well to the world of mortgages and poopy diapers. His newfound career in auto parts is precisely the sort of dead-end job that other movie Everymen would be desperate to leave. That he ultimately comes to prefer it has more to do with the pathological need to demonstrate that white-bread family life is inevitably superior than to the actual merits of that life as depicted in this film. (Granted, being married to the always appealing Leoni would be a strong incentive. However, most of us real-life family men are *not* married to Tea Leoni.)

Third, the film is built on a false, either-or premise. Cage can have a rewarding career *or* a family, not both. When the opportunity to rejoin his old firm arises, Leoni promptly shoots down the possibility because she doesn't want to raise kids in the city. Tea may be sexier than any family man deserves, but she's clearly holding him back. A more honest, interesting film might have followed Cage's efforts to merge his two worlds.

Finally (and this is a spoiler, so skip this paragraph if you don't want to know the ending), the life Cage briefly experiences is a lie. Choosing family over career, as the feel-good morality of "The Family Man" demands, doesn't result in Cage magically assuming this new reality. The best he can hope for is the chance to reconnect with Leoni's character as she is in the present: a hardened business type like himself. The kids he came to love never existed, and will never exist. He may find happiness with Leoni, but won't he always long for a life that never was? If so, then what is the lesson to be learned?

"The Family Man" is predictable schmaltz for those living lives of quiet desperation, lying to themselves that their own road not taken must be worse than the one that they chose.