Product: Crazy in Alabama [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 2.0
pure nonsensical drivel
"Crazy in Alabama," the directorial debut of Antonio Banderas, tries desperately to live up to its title yet simply emerges as deep-fried Southern malarkey garnished with social significance. What the plotters had in mind with this overbaked concoction is truly beyond the powers of mere mortal understanding.The Mark Childress screenplay is a textbook case study of narrative schizophrenia run amok. Melanie Griffith, obviously past her darling ingenue stage and heading into the career sunset of doddering, crazy aunt roles, plays the stereotypical Southern lunatic who has decapitated her abusive husband, packed his head in a tupperware container she carries with her in a hatbox and headed off (pardon the pun) to find fame and glory in the spotlight of 1960's Hollywood. Almost tangetially, the film also concerns itself with her nephew, Peejoe, and his experiences that summer involving a clash between blacks and whites over a segregated swimming pool in the small southern town in which he lives.To say that the filmmakers fail to coalesce these elements into a coherent whole would be a masterpiece of understatement. This actually seems to be two completely different films rubbing up against one another and not liking each other very much. The audience, as a result, is left in a state of headscratching and, occasionally, even jawdropping confusion.Unfortunately, the film fails to work as either a freewheeling black comedy or as an incisive social document. As in so many films dealing with the issue of civil rights, the blacks play secondary roles in their own story, standing in the background as part of a mob rather than stepping forth as fully developed, fully rounded characters in their own right.It also seems odd that a film which approaches this issue in such highminded and reverential terms tries, at the same time, to pass off a serious mental illness as a quaintly admirable example of freespirited non-conformity. The film suffers from a terminal grinding of tonal gears. Who could ever imagine that the same film would feature a recreation of an appearance by Martin Luther King Jr. and the filming of a "Bewitched" episode - and believe that such a coupling could ever result in a meaningful marriage? It is a testament to the utter absurdity and hopelessness of the entire enterprise.Drawing a parallel between a woman who cuts her husband's head off and a group of black people fighting for equal rights and uncritically calling both examples of "freedom" equal to one another insults those involved in the noble latter cause. And not all the scenes of phony emotional uplift at the end - a scanning of tear soaked faces at a ludicrous trial, a shot of Griffith, standing through a sun-roof riding off into the sunset, arms raised in a victory salute - can mitigate the tastelessness at the film's core."Crazy in Alabama" simply proves that, for an offbeat film to be successful, an attempt has to be made to blend the disparate elements of plotting and tone into an organic whole. As it is, "Crazy in Alabama" is merely weird without being any fun.