Nine Months Hugh Grant hooked on parenthood by Peter T. Chattaway In Four Weddings and a Funeral, Hugh Grant learned how to overcome his fear of marriage. Now Nine Months takes him to the next hurdle in the obsta- cle course of Commitment: as Samuel Faulkner, he must learn to overcome his fear of parenthood. In some ways, Nine Months is a bet- ter continuation of the Hugh Grant persona than the recent Englishman Who Went up a Hill, albeittoned down for the family crowd. Grant’s eyelids still flutter and his neck still jigs about when he has to stammer his way through an embarrassing white lie, but his “fuck fuck fuck” traffic-jam soliloquy is here tamed to a barely audible “shit shit shit.” At least Julianne Moore knows how to act. As Rebecca Taylor, she has the screen presence and the emotional resonance to carry Faulkner’s baby and help carry the film, whereas Andie MacDowell could barely be counted on to carry her hat. Unfortunately, Rebecca is written out of the script halfway through — ina flat, non sequitur plot twist, she leaves Samuel because he’s not paternal enough — so that Grant can demonstrate, unobstructed, that Limey charm that puts him, and him alone, at the top of the cred- its. And Grant is certainly up to the task. Yes, the audience tittered whenever his sexual performance entered the dia- logue (and yes, one such discussion takes place in a parked car), but Grantis a truly witty actor and he stutters with impecca- ble comic timing. Still, I can’t help ques- First Knight Gere is bearable, Ormand steals the by Trent Ernst We live in a world that longs for what should be. Trees should always be green. Bad guys should always lose, and Sean Connery should be king. Unfortunately, what should be and what is are two different things, and it is only at the movies where we can sa- tiate our desire for what should be. Hollywood directors also have a conception of how things should be. Consider Jerry Zucker’s latest take on the story of King Arthur and his noble knights. This is how the story should be, at least in his humble opinion: Lancelot should have been a wild seed, closer akin to the wandering Samurai of Medieval Japan than the uptight, armor-clad prig that he is usually made out to be. Malagant, a rather secondary villain in seminal works on Arthur (L’Morte de Arthur springs to mind) is the only villain this Arthur encounters - Morgana Le Fey and Mordred be damned. 1 by Peter T. Chattaway obert Crumb is so contemp- tuous of his fans, it’s impos- sible not to like him ... from a distance. Fortunately, the big screen and the view it offers us from Terry Zwigoff’s camera, offers us just the right amount of distance. Whether snubbing a comic store employee who asks for an auto- graph or complaining, as he draws a picture of a girl he adored in highschool, that he wishes the girl were present “in- stead of this film crew”, Crumb exudes that mix of arrogance and ingenuity that makes great artists out of disturbed peo- ple. How disturbed is Crumb? All things considered, he’s doing better - than one might expect. Raised by an abusive father and a mother whose idea If anything, this interpretation of Arthurian Legend could be the most sanitized version ever to hit the big screen. None of the main characters can do any wrong. Lancelot’s only crime is loving his queen too much, and can love truly be a crime? And when Lancelot and Guinivere fall from Arthur’s grace because of their indiscretions, it is but a kiss that incriminates them. King Arthur is mortally pure. His affair with Morgana is unmentioned. His cause is noble, his heart pure, and he spouts platitudes at the drop of a gauntlet. Reduced to its bare minimum, (the love triangle of Arthur, Guinivere and Lancelot) the story recast in the image of a Hollywood action movie. Richard Gere has some of the best sword fight- ing scenes since Cary Elwes and Mandy Pantinkin crossed blades in The Prin- cess Bride. The movie hustles along at a quick pace, propelled by strong cin- ematography and a tight plot. Julia Ormand puts in a great per- of good hy- giene was or- dering enemas for the kiddies, the broth- ers Crumb can be forgiven their escap- ist eccentricities. Robert’s older brother Charles spends his time taking antide- pressants in his mother’s house and noting his lack of “external [sexual] stimulation”; his younger brother Maxon meditates on a home-made bed of nails when he isn’t suffering an epilectic seizure. All three spent their childhoods drawing comic books — Charles in par- ticular was obsessed with the Disney version of Treasure Island — but it was Robert who parlayed his LSD-inspired inventions into a lucrative franchise. The big feet from Crumb’s “Keep On Truckin’” logos remain a constant ele- ment in his art, as is Mr. Natural; how- ever, in a move worthy of Arthur Conan Doyle, Crumb killed off Fritz the Cat after the feature-length film based on the lecherous feline was patched to- tioning the keyed-up slapstick that consistently undermines the deeper attempts at characterization; are the Matchbox-style car acci- dents and the boyish fistfights (one even happens in the birthing room!) meant to show- case male ineptitude, or do they serve to hold the focus of comic energy away from the female leads? Writer/director Chris Columbus may be coasting on the family-values mayhem of his most recent flicks — Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire — but Nine Months betrays an unusual obsession with B-movie motifs. Halloween costumes, nightmares about woman-sized praying mantises, and the show formance as Guinivere. Sean Connery is good as King Arthur, though it seems he is only along for the ride (and the draw- ing power that attach- ing his name to a movie brings.) The main character, however is Lancelot. And Richard Gere... well, give Gere something to do, and he is palatable. But the (blissfully few) scenes that he is called upon to emote... brrr. First Knight is an enjoy- able action flick. But it has noth- ing to do whatsoever with any leg- end or story of Arthur that I’ ve ever read. There is no mention of Merlin, Hugh Grant (stop tittering) and Julianne Moore star in Vine Months subtly ghoulish casting of Jeff Goldblum and Joan Cusack as siblings all seem to suggest that Columbus wants to get back to his Gremlins roots. For sheer shiver potential, though, it would be hard to top the kisses that Tom table is there, as are the Knights who sit at it. Yet the only Knight who is given a name is Agrivaine. The rest of the Knights languish in nameless Excalibur, The Knightly Quests oreven anonymity. the Quest for the Holy Grail. The round gether without Crumb’s permission: “It will be an embarrassment to me for the rest of my life,” he says. Not that Crumb is easily fazed by embarrassment. He freely discusses his prepubescent sexual fascination with Bugs Bunny and the turn-on he got — at the age of five — from riding his mother’s cowboy boots. Crumb does go red in the face, though, whenever anyone tries to analyze his work and assign it gobs of artistic and psycho- logical worth, be it a museum curator plodding through an analytical spiel or a female party-goer dissecting his foot fetish. All the richness and dynamics of Crumb isn’t forced to share the screen with his more disquieted critics (Trina Robbins, Dierdre English, and others), who question the misogyny implicit in his work. While some women praise his naturalistic depiction of the female body and volunteer to pose for him (one woman goes so far as to say, “He made it okay for me to have a butt”), others detect, in his more violent comic books, evidence of “an arrested juvenile fan- tasy”. (It may be quite telling that his sisters declined an interview with the filmmakers.) Perhaps Crumb’s art does offer, in the adoring words of Time magazine Arnold keeps planting on Hughie. Thank God no baby’s coming out of that rela- tionship. the Arthurian legends are reduced to the most basic of eer ments. There is a Camelot, yes, but it is not the Camelot of legend and history. Rather it is a Camelot born in the minds of a society that yearns for what should be, and not what is. Still, for all of its shortcomings, First Knight is an enjoyable movie to watch. Once. But don’t be fooled by the hype into thinking that the movie has anything to do with King Arthur, be- cause it doesn’t. critic Robet Hughes, “a wide range of masturbatory possibilities.” But such isolationist tendencies have kept him at a regrettable distance from his foes, fans, and family alike. It is easy, some- times, to admire an artist’s courage in spewing whatever is on his or her mind, however unsettling or “incorrect” it may be. And one can certainly understand Crumb’s impulse to detach himself off from an abusive background. But one can’t help supposing that Crumb has also sacrificed the intimacy that ought to replace such abuse. WANTED Production Resource MAINTAIN production equipment TEACH graphic design skills $9.25 per hour 20 hrs / wk mach actols STAFF the office