The Syfy Channel features an endless parade of eat-‘em-ups with names like Sharktopus vs. Gekkosaurus, any one of which you and I could write in an espresso-filled morning.
Nevertheless, weak CGI and strategic devouring are sometimes precisely what the doctor ordered.
Case in point: actor Martin Donovan’s debut directing/writing shot.
Donovan makes a freshman mistake by assuming a paying audience would be interested in what he likes—specifically the life of a failing playwright.
Statistics show that playwright protagonists rank lower in audience identification than the man covered in bees at the Orange County Fair.
Wearing many hats, Donovan portrays playwright Robert Longfellow, crushed after New York critics savage his latest work.
Longfellow exits the Big Apple and returns home to Los Angeles where he hopes to salvage his whiny intellectual life.
Eventually Longfellow is held hostage by wild ex-con neighbor Gus (David Morse). And boy does a gabby bomb detonate right there. Yak-yak politics, yak-yak-theater, yak-yak-colostomy bags.
But just as you’re slipping into REM, the drool flowing from the corner of your mouth like runoff from a mountain brook, Donovan saves his film.
I believe only a novice director would have the guts and cleverness to pull a wild stunt like Donovan, breaking every cinematic rule to yank his picture back from a perpetual run on The Gabby Channel alongside My Dinner with Andre, Lions for Lambs, and Quest for Fire.
Enter Megacrocosaurus.
Noting that action and character risk were sorely lacking,
Donovan boldly used cheap CGI to insert a monster prehistoric crocodile into the narrative. The beast destroys police cars with one swipe of a massive tail. It devours the good and bad alike, a moral statement if there ever was one.
And the monster crushes the house where Longfellow and Gus are yakking away, forcing them to work together if they are to survive.
Past the story mid-point, Donovan breaks another rule by introducing a female lead.
Longfellow and Gus find themselves competing for a stunning police officer (Madison Wong). This attractive-but-competent cop is raising two precocious children who constantly embarrass her by asking, “When will you get married again so we can have a daddy?”
I didn’t mind. I welcomed her complications. I was engaged.
This picture isn’t Savages. Only one man will end up with the woman.
But none will sip from Cupid’s goblet unless they find a way defeat seemingly invincible Megacrocosaurus.
Great movie, outstanding save.
Luca Matrundola stood out as one of 67 executive and associate producers.
Four and a half stars for not hiding out in film festivals where King Gabby rules supreme.
