Stephen King's 'Thinner': A psychological thriller?
By Laksmi Pamuntjak-Djohan
JAKARTA (JP): For all the things that it lacks, Stephen King's Thinner has two moral lessons. One is "don't go near gypsies". Apparently, gypsies are such a vengeful lot that if you mess around with them, they'll put a curse on you and you'll wish you were never born.
The other is "be careful what you wish for ... you just might get it." Which, in the case of overweight Connecticut lawyer Billy Haleck (Robert John Burke), has been proven only too true. Having just won the acquittal of mobster Richie Ginelli (Joe Mantegna), he is the toast of his firm. But, tipping the scales at 300 pounds, he's fighting a losing battle with obesity while continually stuffing one thing after another into his month.
This all changes when Halleck accidentally runs into and kills an old gypsy woman as he and his wife Heidi (Lucinda Jenney) engage in a Sunset Boulevard-type activity that puts a dent in Hugh Grant's reputation. With the connivance of the town's judge, Cary Rossington (John Horton) and its police chief, Duncan Hopley (Daniel Von Bargen), Halleck walked away scot-free, not even as much as charged with a speeding ticket. In retribution, the 106- year-old gypsy chieftain, Tadzu Lempke (Michael Constantine), brushes Halleck's cheek and hisses one word, Thinner.
You can guess the rest. Suddenly, Halleck starts losing weight at the rate of three pounds a day, no matter how much he eats. It should always be that easy. He loves it at first, but as his physique goes from Luciano Pavarotti to a walking cadaver, he quickly descends into psychosis, and, in a rather cute scene, cries out to his wife "I'm being erased!" At which point he should perhaps consult Arnie (seen in last year's action blockbuster Eraser). In an attempt to get the curse removed before he vanishes entirely, he solicits Richie's help and turns him into his gypsy terminator (to which Arnie is still the best answer).
Granted, interpretation is a classic problem in adaptations. So is shallow morality. In the novel, Thinner seems to depend on the understanding that Halleck is an unscrupulous man trying to use the system to his advantage and weasel out of a punishment that he deserves. The gypsies, on the other hand, are an unjustly persecuted minority who get to dole out vernacular justice and triumph in the end. However, director Tom Holland -- of Fright Night fame -- doesn't believe that we can accept an unsympathetic protagonist, so he turns the gypsies into ghoulish villains, and Halleck into the wronged hero who deserves to have the last say.
But who are we kidding here? Having perpetuated a racist depiction of the gypsies, there is not one sympathetic person in this film. Though emaciated individuals tend to generate compassion among audiences, Halleck certainly isn't one of them. He is the archetypal portrait of white-collar greed with neither an ounce of intelligence nor a trace of humanity in him. While the fat Halleck is a goofy buffoon who rolls his eyes and puts on the requisite facial ticks at every opportunity, the thin Halleck is a hissing xenophobe of the worst kind.
Robert John Burke, last seen in Fled, proves that he is no better as a thin actor than as a fat one. Lucinda Jenney, who has worked with A-List directors, is just as bad, as her shallow and adulterous character is exactly the type worthy of a gypsy curse. Worse, Jenney adds a D-grade delivery that renders actresses such as Shari Shattuck and Shannon Tweed -- frequent sex bombs in Andrew Stevens' soft porn films -- classy by comparison.
Awful
The rest of the cast fares no better. Joy Lenz is positively awful as Halleck's teenage daughter, a whiny, obnoxious, 90210 stereotype who gives her age group a bad name; Kari Wuhrer, as the dead woman's granddaughter, retains none of her allure but is instead reduced to a spitting, cursing, walking bag of profanity in a long red skirt; Michael Constantine does little beyond rasping all the way throughout the movie; John Horton gives the flattest reading of the flattest lines in what must be one of this year's flattest movies. Even Joe Mantegna (Tony Award winner for the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Glengarry Glen Ross) is incapable of introducing any semblance of quality as he is totally wasted in this anemic dreck.
As if attempting to place the subject matter in a familiar suburban context, the sound plays out like an amateur handycam work, and the cinematography is flat, with the entire film shot in bright light. But how much realism do we expect from a film bearing Stephen King's name?
Although the novel is more of an internal thriller focused on the psychological trajectory of Halleck's bulimic nightmare, it also has an almost biblical sense of cosmic payback more akin to King's horror stories. Yet, the latter often proves to be one of King's laziest ironies, as it prevents him from exploring potentially worthwhile themes and ideas. Typically filmed with screaming predictability and wooden acting, no wonder King's psychological dramas (Misery, The Shawshank Redemption) have fared better over the years.
Thinner's inability to decide whether it's horror, psychological thriller or comedy turns it into none of the above. It is not scary, it is not emotional, it is not funny -- just a piece of sloppy film-making that offers little but the opportunity to watch Burke's prosthetic transformation in the hands of special effects wizard Greg Cannom (The Mask, Mrs. Doubtfire). Although latex strips are often detectable on Burke's face, the "fat suit" (full-body in one shower scene) is pretty convincing.
But that's just about all there is to it -- no meat, just fat.