|
||||
|
|
||||
|
Almost An Angel (1990) In this, his first post-"Crocodile" Dundee vehicle, Paul Hogan casts himself as a good-natured thief who thinks he has died after running in front of a car to save a little girl and is visited by God (an uncredited, typecast Charlton Heston), whereupon he believes that he has been selected to be a probationary angel – just like on the Michael Landon TV series Highway to Heaven, which is helpfully playing in his hospital bedroom – and sets out to do good works. Specifically, he moves to a small town and cheers up a depressed, dying cripple (Elias Koteas) while helping the wheelchair man's sister (Linda Kozlowski) run a day-care centre for latchkey children. Rigging a few miracles, Hogan manages to save the day, ultimately convincing the girl that even though her brother has just died he's gone to Heaven so that's all right then, although this sentiment will be of little help to theatre managers who have to scrape up the vomited popcorn off their carpets after this uplifting finale. Released on Boxing Day in the hope that goodwill to all men will extend
to this movie, or that everyone has already drawn up their Worst of
the Year lists, this is a feature-length ordeal of agonising proportions.
Combining Hogan's trade-marked glutinous smarm with a deadening dollop
of religiosity, Almost an Angel is further stuck with
a storyline that drifts nowhere, and scenes that uniformly outlive their
welcome as enough homespun, God-fearin' philosophy to convert John-Boy
Walton to Satanism is mercilessly rammed down your throat. Hogan works
overtime to prove that, like Joan Collins and Victor Borge, he is one
of those performers who is only ever bearable in adverts. Aside from
Hogan's duff script, Mrs Hogan's rotten heroine performance and Elias
Koteas' bargain basement Ron Kovic act, this is a grainy, ugly, cheap-looking
picture and it's a shame Empire doesn't have a category lower
than one star to award it. First Published In: Empire (issue unknown) Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
|
||||
