Visibly bad
By Paul Tatara
CNN.com Reviewer
(CNN) -- Director Paul Verhoeven's movies are, pretty much without fail, sexually piggish and revoltingly violent. He touches all the expected bases with his latest piece of glossy hack work, a would-be horror picture called "Hollow Man."
Kevin Bacon stars as Sebastian Caine, a brilliant, egotistical scientist who volunteers to inject himself with a serum that causes invisibility. Then he runs around groping women and squeezing their nipples while they're asleep.
So much for the more difficult questions of identity. It takes Bacon so long to get remotely philosophical about his predicament that the vague allure of another invisible-man picture is completely eclipsed by an ongoing panty raid. The movie's title doesn't refer to T.S. Eliot -- not that anyone in their right mind would expect it to. It actually references Hugh Hefner.
Verhoeven, who's responsible for such groundbreakingly low-brow masterworks as "Showgirls" (1995) and "Starship Troopers" (1997), isn't especially concerned with storyline or complex characters. There's practically no story at all, at least not until Bacon suddenly, and pretty unbelievably, grows murderous and starts pursuing his colleagues down steamy corridors like a see-through cousin to Ridley Scott's "Alien" (1979).
Two men, one woman
Sebastian's former girlfriend, a sexy co-worker named Linda (Elisabeth Shue), is secretly sleeping with Matthew (Josh Brolin), another co-worker. Linda is keeping the affair hush-hush, though, because Sebastian still has eyes for her. Sebastian, who we're repeatedly told is super-duper mega-intelligent, thinks that Matthew has been riding on his coattails for far too long. So word of any bedroom gymnastics would definitely cause a stink around the lab.
This love triangle doesn't generate a speck of tension. The real reason Verhoeven is interested in it is to give Shue a motive for stripping down to her formidable skivvies. She also experiences a tawdry, altogether needless "nobody's there" sexual attack that ends up being a bad dream. You know the drill. Just when her panties have been yanked off and the worst is about to occur, she sits bolt-upright in bed and gasps for air, stopping the horror in mid-assault. Then the story moves on to the next titillation.
Kim Dickens, Joey Slotnick, Mary Randle, and Greg Grunberg play the other scientists, even though their sarcastic repartee would be better suited to a playground full of junior high schoolers. Bacon even tells a dirty joke involving Superman, Wonder Woman and The Invisible Man. You probably know it. It went over big when you first heard it in your sixth-grade P.E. class.
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Dickens gets abused more than anybody else in the cast, and that's saying something. She's the first woman that Bacon diddles once he realizes that invisibility is a great way to meet women, whether they like it or not.
Strong effects, weak tale
Any red-blooded male could think of inappropriate things to do if he were suddenly in Sebastian's position, and most would actually do them. But good horror movies, especially those made in the 1930s and 1940s, ask tough questions about our existence, then supply unsettling answers. That includes "The Invisible Man" (1933), a film that's mostly remembered these days for Claude Raines' highly unfashionable gauze-and-Ray Bans facial wrap.
So be it. It's gotten to the point where audiences immediately genuflect before special effects and forget that a movie is supposed to be attached to them. As bad as "Hollow Man" is, and it's very bad, there's bound to be viewers to lap it up.
The transformation scenes, during which a gorilla, then Bacon himself, shifts in and out of invisibility, are amazing. Veins ooze, cartilage creeps, and skeleton teeth chatter. But so what?
People need to realize that pretty much any special effect is now within Hollywood's reach. Saying, "The effects are good" after watching an entire film -- and that's about the only positive thing you can say about "Hollow Man" -- is like reading a novel, then carrying on about the tremendous binding. Verhoeven surely knows this. The problem is, he just doesn't care.
"Hollow Man" contains nudity, sex, copious gore, and profanity. Help maintain Bacon's goal of invisibility by not seeing it. Rated R. 115 minutes.
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