Excess Baggage
Director: Marco Brambillo.
Starring: Alicia Silverstone, Benicio Del Toro, Christopher Walken,
Jack Thompson, Harry Connick Jr, Nicholas Turturro.
I will confess that one of the main reasons I wanted to see Excess
Baggage was to see how much weight Ms. Alicia Silverstone had
gained. Ever since the rumours of having to grease her up to fit
her into the Bat-Girl costume, I've been curious. Am I shallow?
Pathetically so.
Excess Baggage is also the first of a three part production
deal for Ms. Silverstone where she has a large amount of control
vis-a-vis script, casting etc. For someone as young as she, it's a
pretty impressive deal; as such I was curious as to the results.
First things first: the weight gain. Let's just say that currently,
she'd never get the part of Cher in Clueless. By normal
standards, she's not at all large but by movie standards ... well,
there
weren't too many shots focusing on her body. She seems happy with
it, though. I've read some sensible quotes from her about her weight
and during the movie she shows shots of her eating a twinkie and has a
few characters refer to her rear (more specifically, Stick says "What
an arse!").
The movie itself? Like the curate's egg, good and bad.
Mr. Christopher Walken, Mr. Benicio Del Toro and Ms. Silverstone all
give great performances, although at times Ms. Silverstone's cutsie
Clueless smile is out of place with her nasty character.
(She can now join the ranks of a select group of lip people whose
mouths irritate me: Mr. Brad Pitt and Mr. Ethan Hawke being the
charter members.) The best scenes are when Mr. Walken and Mr. Del
Toro are together; they are clearly having fun and play off each other
very well. Mr. Jack Thompson as
the father is completely unconvincing. If I hadn't seen him in other
roles, I wouldn't believe he could act. And what is with his accent?
Similarly, Mr. Connick Jr as an actor
makes a great jazz singer. Have I missed his one good role because he
keeps getting sizeable parts in reasonably mainstream movies and yet
is so wooden he could singlehandedly save our old growth forests.
There are a few interesting plot twists as well as some quite funny
lines. I like the character Emily; although she is nasty and a bit
spoilt, she is also tough. She can handle herself.
Excess Baggage, however, takes too long to resolve
the main story-line while never resolving a few threads, most notably,
what happened to Mr. Connick Jr and the phone call he was making, not
that I wasn't pleased to see him go?
Overall, a reasonable start for a young producer: not bad enough to
have studio execs panicking about the other two movies in the deal and
good enough to keep me interested in what Ms. Silverstone will try
next.
Rating: P
© Nikki Lesley 1997