Waitress

The Wicker Man (2006)

HBO Broadcast, Seattle, WA

October 10, 2007

* / ****

Question: if Leelee Sobieski and James Franco had a child together would it be the most beautiful looking person ever? Oh never mind… Nic Cage in a bear suit!

What the shit is up with the 2006 remake of the classic The Wicker Man? The dream sequences, the bees, the strange soliloquies, the lobotomized man-slaves, Nic Cage on a rickety bicycle and rampaging in a bear suit, and blue-eyed beauty Leelee Sobieski in a fat girl dress, what is it all about? Being a fan of the 1973 original I was excited to see a modern update of this unusual tale of cults and rituals and the perversely bizarre. Unfortunately, this interpretation is horrendous.

What is The Wicker Man all about? Here’s the short of it: a little girl goes missing on the private island of Summersisle. California police officer Nic Cage gets a letter from his ex-fiance urging him to help her find this little girl, her daughter. Cage travels to the remote Summersisle in Puget Sound, meets his ex-fiance, and goes on a wild goose chase as he discovers the mysterious island is run solely by a tribe of ritualistic farming women who wear bee keaper suits, keep mentally slow men as their laborers, and act in bizarre ways for no other reason than they are part of this movie. Where is the missing little girl and will the gallantly disheveled Nic Cage save the day and punch out some bitchy women before it’s too late? If you care then you are a better viewer than I because I could hardly stand this film from the first frame to the last. And I wanted to like it!

This version of The Wicker Man takes elements of the original, puts them in a blender with director Neil LaBute’s always odd touch (think the bizarre Nurse Betty and The Shape of Things), pours in a heaping dose of idiocy, a smattering of confusion, and an awful ending that makes you wonder how a movie this terrible could have a finale even worse than its first two acts and blammo, you’ve got a bigger mess than an infant’s diaper. Blech!

Where the original film succeeded in creating a strange though real feeling pagan culture with unmatched creepy ambience, this Wicker Man takes a reasonable twist (a society of women) and goes hog wild adding ludicrous embellishment and setting no tone whatsoever. No one in this story feels real, the rules of the island appear plucked out of a hat, and everyone filling the roles seem as though they are acting in a movie rather than assuming a character and bringing that character to life. The result is a film not only without a genre or a particular audience to enjoy it, but also a presentation that is sloppy, misguided, and boring.

My advice for fixing this mess? Burn every last copy of this lousy Wicker Man, replace them with the classic original version, and pretend the whole thing never happened. Forget everything, that is, except Nic Cage in a bear suit. That shit is funny!