I Feel Dirty And It Won't Wash Off

Rating: Null/10 (30 March 2002)

I first saw this movie when it came out in the cinema and enjoyed it. Then I saw it again today on TV and was dismayed at much I had apparently been sucked in by the Hollywood hype: two kids write the screenplay, star in it as well, it's an utterly brilliant film and gets an Oscar -- and I fell for it hook, line and sinker. OK, I will let this be a lesson to myself. The way I see it today is that it is a well - executed film, but the story is pure drizzle. Not just non - academic yob turns out to be talented, that would have been a realistic premise and could have made for a likeable movie. But not good enough for Hollywood -- instead it has to be a janitor at the MIT, and of course he is a gazillion times more brilliant than the professor (who is of course a field - medal - aspiring genius in his own right) of the very building he is working in. Hold on, I'm not finished. And this dude is also a genius in other areas, at least enough so to impress the judge with his legal cognizance, and he can quote lengthy passages out of philosophy books and he's into organic chemistry just for kicks, and he is a total fire - fighter - cute hunk as well, and he's good at fisticuffs too, and he wins the heart and hand of this super - intelligent, cute and rich chick who turns out to have a heart of gold and is the only one to accept him for what he really is, but he has got this problem facing his own genius because he would rather continue his squalid life of petty crime and dead - end jobs (hey, don't we all?), but then this brilliant psychiatrist who looks ten times more like Sigmund Freud than the man himself comes to the rescue, and -- totally unexpected -- things tie up to a happy end. HOW ON EARTH COULD I EVER HAVE FALLEN FOR THIS CRAP? Did Hollywood temporarily lobotomize me? Please, someone, shoot me!
OK, the bottom line: highly forgettable film. End of bottom line.