Adam Sandler has given us two incredibly pathetic movies: This one and Little Nicky. Both these ’’movies’’ should never have been shot, and since they were, their film reel should have been destroyed.
But life is not always that fair and just. So, we get to see both these rubbish.
THE ANIMAL is a comedic takeoff on the old Frankenstein based legend. It has a hilarious ’’kill the monster’’ ending, which is the only time the movie follows the traditional Frankenstein story, and is one of only two good parts to the movie. The other is an oh-so cute Colleen Haskell who plays Schneider’s human love interest. As you watch her being superb in a movie which is awful, you find yourself eagerly awaiting her next picture, which has to be better. She emerges from this crazed catastrophe unscathed - unless you count Rob Schneider’s running his tongue across her face.
The story, which is explained in detail in the movie’s shockingly idiotic trailers, concerns Marvin Mange (Schneider), a loser of a man whose body is reconstituted out of animal parts after a car accident. This causes him to have a never ending stream of animal urges. Peeing all over his restaurant table in order to mark his territory, a la` a dog, is one such ’’cute’’ behavior.
Another ’’comic’’ scene has him imitating a worm so that a baby vulture can peck the remains out of his mouth. Marvin plays a physically challenged dork who awakens from a coma with the speed of a cheetah, the olfactory sense of a dog, and the sexual drive of a goat. He discovers he can outrun a man on horseback and swim like a seal. Since he has no idea about the implants that have been, well, implanted by ameical team, he attributes his amazing physical prowess to a disgusting beverage called Badger Milk.
At an airport, he’s able to sniff out drugs and nab a drug smuggler and, as a result, is immediately welcomed on the police force by the grateful Chief. But his animal instincts prove a distraction in his courtship of a environmentalist who runs the local animal shelter
And I won’t even delve into his romatic interludes with a female goat in heat.
Are you laughing yet? You aren’t? Well, how about a man who sniffs other men’s butts? A man who lusts after every tail -- of whatever species -- in sight? A man who barfs up hairballs?
Okay, I give up. You aren’t laughing.
Part of the reason the movie sucks big time is because it never even tries to get you to to know the characters. Even an over-the-top comedy has to give you some reason to like the main cast, to will them to succeed at whatever they do. It has to give you just enough things that make sense to make the crazy stuff really funny.
In The Animal, nothing ever makes sense and you never care about anyone. You just keep waiting for a reason to laugh out loud. Yes, there are a few glimmers of hope of a joke. One is Schneider’s black friend who’s mad that everyone treats him so nice because he’s black. And there is a little surprise or two at the end. But with the bad language and lots of really crude sexual humor, there’s just no reason to spend an hour and 23 minutes (or six bucks) on this film. The movie’s tagline nicely sums it up: ’’He wasn’t much of a man. ... Now he’s not much of an animal.’’
Well, this much can be said in THE ANIMAL’s defense: THE ANIMAL runs, thankfully, only 1:23.