Product: To Die For (1995)
Rating: 5.0
The Plotz Thickens
If you like your humor smart, wicked, ironic, and served on a silver platter, this one's for you. Buck Henry wrote the screenplay, which should say plenty about the level of intelligence and sly wit at work here. Nicole Kidman gives the performance of a career as a woman who looks, acts, and dresses like a Barbie doll come to life. She has completely bought into the myth that, frankly, we all believe to one extent or another. That is, being on tv is a good thing and validates a person, makes that person more real than real. Her obsession to be a tv celebrity is like a narcotic for her.Suzanne Stone lives in a fantasy land, imagining that her role as the weather lady on a local cable access tv station will somehow be a springboard for Babwa Wawa type notoriety. Watching her voracious, yet somehow sadly innocent, ambition is both funny and horrifying. Kidman plays it perfectly, never winking at the camera. The story, though based on actual events, is little more than a vehicle for many wonderful performances. Her husband, played with real comic skill by Matt Dillon, has to go, he's just in the way. The stoner, semi-goth high school students she enlists for the hit, including Joaquin Phoenix, are charmed and subservient, amazed that a celebrity would pay attention to them. (As we would be if Oprah asked us to wax her car, which we probably would, because we also believe that being on tv is a good and important thing.)Other inspired performances include George Segal in a splendidly cynical cameo, succinctly summarizing tv business reality. Dan Hedaya, who must get his 5:00 shadow somewhere around 9:47 a.m., is just right as the guy who settles the score. But the real sleeper is Illeana Douglas, narrator and Ms. Stone's sister-in-law. She smells a rat long before anyone else, and her wise-acre sarcastic delivery is terrific, especially as she gracefully skates over the evidence. That's cold!Van Sant is a very interesting director. Drugstore Cowboy was as fascinating as it was disturbing. Elephant offered an amazing look at Columbine through the other end of the lens. Finding Forrester, a tad trite and commercial, did have heart. Good Will Hunting, yikes, what did we do to deserve the twin monsters it loosed upon the landscape? Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, one of the best books ever becomes one of worst movies ever. My Own Private Idaho. This movie, featuring an unnerving performance by the late River Phoenix, was chilling, haunting, beautiful, and absolutely brilliant. Van Sant is certainly capable of greatness, and Kidman is also. In To Die For they are both at their absolute best.