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AaronMichaelGordon.com: Voice of Degeneration

On Re-analyzing "Final Analysis"

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This entry was posted on 8/10/2007 11:27 AM and is filed under so damn bad its great, Humor.

I am a huge fan of any movie that crosses the line from ‘bad’ into “So Damn Bad It’s Great.” Fortunately, Hollywood never tires of producing these disasters…it’s almost as if they have a separate division in place specifically to keep the careers of such luminaries as Sharon Stone in business (for die-hard lovers of the ‘genre,’ I highly recommend “Bad Movies We Love,” although sadly, there was no sequel to the book, and it’s pop-culture goodness cuts off around 1992.)

Mind you, not all ‘bad’ movies cross-over into the “So Damn Bad It’s Great” category, no matter how loopy and off-the-wall. For example, Madonna’s “Body of Evidence” is just plain horrible, despite her line reading of “I fucked you, I fucked Andrew, I fucked Frank. That's what I do; I fuck.” And the aforementioned Sharon Stone, despite her considerable scenery-chewing abilities, couldn’t rescue “Basic Instinct 2.” These are just bad movies, plain and simple.

However, a select few make the crossover into laughable nirvana, where the movie is just so bad that it becomes great. “Mommie Dearest” is the model for just such a movie, where the production team asks the audience to believe that Joan Crawford behaved like an over-arching ‘Movie Star’ 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week. And that she beat the hell out of her kids with hangers, Comet cleaner and whatever else was lying around because she was flat-out nuts. And that Diana Scarwid could act.

One of my favorite ‘So Damn Bad It’s Great” movies is “Final Analysis.” Released in the wake of “Basic Instinct,” this thriller didn’t really get much box office love, and certainly didn’t generate much in the way of thrills…except for bad movie lovers like me. It’s almost a ‘National Lampoons’ version of a Hitchcock movie, and here’s why:

The inspired team-up Kim Basinger and Richard Gere clues you in, right from the start, that this is one for the record books. You know, nine out of ten times if you cast even one of these ‘actors’ in a movie, it’s bound to suck. Basinger hits the mark once every seven years or so, and Gere pretty much coasted from “An Officer and a Gentleman” to “Chicago” on stinkers of the highest disorder. Basinger makes bad choices, but has some talent; Gere is merely pretty. To team them up (and again, after the hooty disaster that is “No Mercy,” no less,) is to basically secure your movie into the bad Hall of Fame from the start.

“Final Analysis” starts with a Hitchcock-by-way-of-PC-movie-editing-program credits sequence, that features a lighthouse searchlight scanning over ‘exciting’ plot points to come: a bar bell, a vase of flowers…a lighthouse. After you’ve propped up your eyelids with toothpicks (because this opening takes forever,) you’re transported into Richard Gere’s office. Gere is San Francisco’s best, genius psychiatrist…and he’s treating Uma Thurman, who is recounting a dream she once had, about arranging flowers in a vase on a table: violets, lilies and the like. Now, anybody who has taken ‘Introduction to Psychology’ in college knows this Freudian passage (and that ‘violets’ means ‘violence,’) but Gere’s Isaac Barr is oblivious to this mega-obvious deception. Or maybe it’s just that Gere has three total expressions in the movie: dead, simulating-sex dead, and smirky-but-dead.

Anyway, Uma Thurman recommends that Isaac meet her sister for some more insight into all the ways her flower-arranging is fucked up (she also checks the stove zillions of times before leaving the apartment! Commit her today!) Enter Kim Basinger. It must have been in Basinger’s contract that she gets to wear comfortable shoes…because her outfits are all stunning ‘early 1990s fashion,’ while her flats are straight out the bargain bin. This is also a fun movie for fans of the Basinger hair, because she goes through something like 70 hairstyles in two hours. Anyway, Kim bores us with a story about how Uma’s Diana may have killed their parents in a fire, and how she’s married to Eric Roberts, an abusive son-of-a-bitch who builds urban housing for the poor.

This, of course, leads to the obligatory scene between Gere and a no-name actor-lawyer advising Gere not to fuck either Basinger or Thurman…even though Gere is interested in Basinger (does she have a gerbil?) Now, at this point of the movie, Basinger’s Heather Evans is playing up her ‘tremble with fear and innocence’ act, so we either feel sorry for her…or we want to get her a goddamn coat so she’ll stop shivering. To Basinger’s credit, this tactic works wonders in her scenes with Eric Roberts, all greasy sleaze and stoopid dialogue. With Gere? Well, who can tell? He blinks, he recites lines. He looks good in a suit…

…and out of one, because Basinger and Gere get to the scene we all really came to the movie for: simulated sex! Basinger, always good at turning up the fuck, rolls back her eyes and undulates her hips…and Gere? Even naked with Kim, he is really just not ‘in the moment.’ His ass looks good though. Kim then goes home and has sex with Eric…on the same night no less, so her vagina must be quite tired and sore.

In between scenes of Basinger and Gere heading to have a romp on the stairs of an old lighthouse (where she gets him to grab a barbell…in the most awkward and obvious way possible,) we discover that Basinger suffers from ‘pathological intoxication,’ an ‘only-in-the-movies’ disorder that makes her go crazy and forget her actions anytime she has even a little bit of alcohol. One of her ‘PI’ moments involves what may be the most furious steak-slicing scene ever committed to celluloid. That prime cut didn’t have a chance.

Eric Roberts winds up dead, smacked in the head with a dumbbell by Basinger, who claims that she’s had too much cough syrup, which fueled her ‘pathological intoxication.’ Gere helps to defend her, in the longest, most-drawn out insanity case in the history of movies. Since everyone in this version of San Francisco is as dumb as the bell that killed Roberts, Basinger doesn’t get charged with murder, and gets sent to a state asylum for a little bit, but it looks good that she’ll be released in a few months (and inherit all of Roberts money.)

It’s only at this point that Gere begins to question Basinger’s motives…specifically because he’s at a conference talking about Freud’s groundbreaking ‘arranging flowers in a vase’ theory (seriously…like what community college did Gere get his degree from?) He then confronts Basinger in the asylum (where they apparently have a hair and makeup salon, because she look ravishing in captivity,) and Basinger makes the happy switch from ‘wilting flower’ to ‘cast-iron crazy bitch.’ She hisses ‘Don’t fuck with me Isaac,’ as she reveals what only Gere and perhaps a retarded person hasn’t guessed: she has the dumbbell he touched in the lighthouse, and its that very same dumbbell that clocked Roberts. Basinger is clearly having the time of her life playing up the ‘bad girl.’ She really catches onto her inner snake with such ludicris lines as ‘I have the dumbbell. The dumbbell?’

Gere’s response is to have an extended eye-blink, and then blink his eyes again! Why this man never won an Academy Award® is beyond me.

Do stick around for the evaluation scene in the nuthouse, where Gere and Thurman set up Basinger…and she launches into the stratosphere of over-the-top acting, including a massive litany of ‘fuck you’-s as she’s dragged out of the room. Listen for the absurd directorial choice…because after Basinger is gone, we hear a little, almost-playful yelp of a ‘fuck you’ from behind the door.

I’m not going to spoil the rest of this movie, but it just gets more nuts from this point on. Basinger and Thurman switch places (not that they look even remotely alike, or that anybody would choose to stay in an insane asylum,) and Basinger wanders the streets of San Francisco shooting people and grabbing dumbbells. In one of the best moments here, a guy Gere has hired to follow Basinger (who he thinks is Thurman,) steals the dumbbell from her, and then she shows up. The dude actually squints as she approaches (now THAT’S an acting choice,) and Basinger (who, at least appears to be having fun,) bellows out ‘wrong girl, pal,’ before plugging him in the chest. Don’t miss the finale…where a detective, Gere and Basinger all wind up back at that same lighthouse for the big finish.


 

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