'Mimic' crawls in imitation of avenging nature genre

By Bruce Emond

JAKARTA (JP): He may be long departed, but Alfred Hitchcock still has a lot to answer for. Not talking about his relentlessly voyeuristic, borderline misogynistic view of women in peril, but the dubious legacy of The Birds.

The 1964 movie garnished the nature-strikes-back schlock plot device with a respectability that spawned numerous imitators. Despite some redeeming entries in the genre (the first Jaws, Arachnophobia), the bulk of the sorry vehicles justifiably falls among filmdom's pans.

Prizes for anyone who remembers The Swarm, an all-star debacle in which the audience ends up cheering for the marauding critters; Savage Bees, most notable for a pre-Dynasty Joan Collins' remarkable ability to flee some mighty irritated insects without so much as smudging her makeup or getting a hair out of place; or, Day of the Animals, telling of a veritable menagerie of unhappy beasts which vent their frustrations on a band of campers in search of an acting lesson.

Frogs, rats and fish (Piranha) have even been given the opportunity on celluloid to hit the warpath, briefly turning the tables on their human oppressors before the mere mortals win out.

But just when you thought Tinseltown's wizards had exhausted the ranks of hapless members of the animal kingdom, out crawls Guillermo Del Toro's Mimic (tellingly, the latter's media guide has a brief reference to the pioneering importance of Hitchcock's The Birds).

The guilty party this time is the resourceful cockroach. Not the common household variety easily taken care of by roach motels and Raid, but a gigantic mutant species -- voracious, malevolent and with deductive powers to boot -- laying waste to humans in contemporary New York City.

But in the film's risibly heavy-handed, moralistic stab at meaning, this oversized pest problem is all due to humans dabbling in the affairs of nature.

The opening sequence scans a hospital ward crammed with sickly children, languishing in iron lungs, all desperately gasping for breath. Their plight is due to a disease spread by the huge cockroach population in the Big Apple.

Enter Dr. Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino), who teams up with her husband, a deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control, in handling the terrible problem. They come up with a brilliant idea to crossbreed various species of cockroaches, eventually deriving what they call the "Judas" roach.

This is released into the bowels of the city's sewage system, mating with the endemic cockroach and producing a supposedly sterile hybrid. Lo and behold, the disease is contained, bringing plaudits for the ingenious twosome.

Fast forward three years. Horror of horrors, the cockroaches have mutated into bloodthirsty creatures with designs for living in the real world. In the ultimate irony, they have acquired anthromorphic qualities as savvy mimics of the rapacious ways of humans.

A chastened Susan and hubby are enlisted in the renewed fight against the roaches, drawing on their intellectual smarts and some previously untapped physical strengths.

They learn a sobering lesson in the process that nature is not to be trifled with (cue resounding thud of sledgehammer to slam home the point).

Viewers will likely be squirming in their seats at least 10 minutes into this movie, but it won't be from the creepy-crawlies on screen, which don't show up until later, anyway.

That uneasy feeling comes upon realization that the powers that be behind Mimic take its ludicrous premise oh-so-seriously. It crashes and burns in its bid to be a fast-paced thriller, weighed down by the conspicuous miscasting of Sorvino in the pivotal lead role and an inane plot premise.

Try as she might, Sorvino cannot breathe life into the tacky tale. She may have won an Oscar in her tour de force performance as the guileless call girl in Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite, but, like fellow Academy Award winner Marisa Tomei, she lacks the screen presence to single-handedly carry a film lacking other big-name actors (F. Murray Abraham of Amadeus fame puts in a special appearance).

We first glimpse Sorvino looking her most concerned -- signal heavy brows and glassy eyes -- in the children's quarantine ward. But the initial impression from her neat coif and pert ski-slope nose is that she is one of the kids' mothers, an elder sister or the au pair.

Granted, it would take a tremendous actress to right the sinking ship of this fundamentally flawed tale. The role of Tyler demands a serene authority; one immediately thinks of Susan Sarandon, but she no doubt would not have given the Mimic script a second look.

When Sorvino stands up and gives a speech at a ceremony, she is dressed the part in her little power suit. Then she opens her mouth, and her deliberate pronunciation and delivery only serves to start a guessing game over whether she grew up in a suburb off the New Jersey Turnpike.

It is a stretch, but Mimic may have worked as a wacky, sardonic spoof in the same vein as Meet the Applegates or MTV's Joe's Apartment, or a black comedy, which has the guts to laugh at itself.

What might have been is encapsulated in the scene following the grisly devouring of a priest. Investigators pore over the scene, and find a huge roach turd stuck to the wall.

"What do you make of this?" hardened New York cop deadpans as he pulls out buttons found in the droppings. "Must have been after some fiber."

Astoundingly, this absurd exchange, crying out for a sardonic touch, is all played as if it is terribly meaningful high art. Mimic, promoted as a disaster movie of our times, is nothing more than a disaster of a movie for all time.