Stephen King's Thinner Blu-ray Review
Who needs Jenny Craig when you have something like this?
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, August 21, 2012
According to not very authoritative research on the not always reliable internet, Americans spend some 40 billion (yes,
billion with a
b) annually on diet food. Horrormeister Stephen King has a convenient money saving solution for
any of you contributing to that rather incredible total: simply become the victim of a Gypsy curse and the pounds will fall
off you like leaves off of an autumn tree. In days of yore, at least according to Universal horror films, Gypsy curses
usually had something to do with turning into a wolf when the full moon rose, but in the Stephen King universe, they're
an almost karmic retribution for perceived misbehavior. Rather interestingly, my brother-in-law, who got his degree in
Film from the University of Southern California and who now works as a film editor in Los Angeles, evidently was given
Thinner as a novel in one of his class assignments and told to write a "treatment" for a film adaptation,
complete with critical analysis about how well the book might transfer to the screen. Though the book was released
under King's pseudonym of Richard Bachman, by the time the it actually
was optioned and adapted for the
screen (some years after my brother-in law's USC class assignment), the filmmakers were not taking anything for
granted or leaving anything to chance, and the movie was prominently marketed as
Stephen King's Thinner.
Like a lot of King novels, a deceptively simple premise gives rise to a whole series of horrifying events.
Thinner
is in basic terms a tale of retribution where an elderly Gypsy curses those who he feels are responsible for the death of
his daughter. Those "guilty" ones include lead character Billy Halleck (Robert John Burke), a morbidly obese and morally
questionable attorney who is momentarily distracted while driving one evening and his wife is, shall we say, attending
to some of his carnal needs. Billy closes his eyes in a moment of pleasure and manages to hit, run over and promptly
kill an incredibly elderly Gypsy woman who has been crossing the street. The woman's even more elderly Gypsy father
(Michael Constantine) reacts with a curse against Billy and two other co-conspirators who more or less push the death
under the figurative rug.
Stephen King's novels and short stories have had an oddly varied success rate in their film and television adaptations.
Sometimes they tend to work despite themselves. Kubrick's
The Shining was like Grand Guignol on lithium, and
its
odd combination of King's horror with the director's almost dissociative quality made for a riveting, if at times flawed,
experience. More recent films like
The Shawshank Redemption and
The Green Mile have tended to
slather
on the symbolism and portentous inflection, creating fitfully compelling pieces of entertainment that are often better
appreciated in terms of discrete elements rather than as a whole. Often King's most riveting film or television
adaptations
have been the ones that have simply played it more or less straight, like
Carrie.
Thinner might be
termed
one of those partially successful films, perhaps due more than anything to the fact that the source novel is on the slight
side to begin with (which is not stay it's not hugely enjoyable), meaning there's no huge amount of turgid exposition to
get through to simply enjoy (if that's the right word) the predicament faced by the focal attorney and his cohorts.
Part of the issue with this particular adaptation is that the overweight "hero" of the piece isn't really a hideously
disgusting man, and in fact is kind of sympathetic throughout his trials and tribulations. He may not exactly rise to the
level of Job, and there's certainly complicity between him, the town's judge and police chief after he has his unfortunate
accident, but in this film adaptation, Billy is actually kind of a nice guy, a caring father and a decent enough husband
(who ends up being cuckolded, as if there's not enough else going wrong with his life). That makes the central conceit
of
Thinner turn into something like a serious case of
Schadenfreude, where the real guilt involved may
be from the viewer, taking him or herself to task for delighting in poor Billy's problems.
Robert John Burke is one of those journeymen actors whom viewers will perhaps recognize, but perhaps not be able to
fully identify where they've seen him. Burke has had a long history on television and occasional forays into film, but he's
had a tendency to revel in juicier supporting character roles than he has in leads. He's not especially charismatic in
Thinner, which may not be a fair criticism in any case since he plays so much of the film under so much latex.
What Burke manages to do very well in
Thinner is display Billy's vulnerability as well as his increasing
desperation once the curse has set in and he decides he's not going to simply waste away into nothingness.
The film is probably most notable, for better or worse, for its fantastic makeup effects. Burke's transformation as Billy
from rotundity to almost corpse like gauntness is remarkable. There are also some creepy looking effects on the judge
and chief. While Burke is fine from a performance standpoint, the film actually belongs to some of the supporting actors,
including a nice vicious turn by Joe Mantegna as a mob boss Billy has defended and to whom he turns for help in dealing
with his little "Gypsy problem," and the great Michael Constantine as the elderly Gypsy paterfamilias who places the
wasting curse on Billy.
Thinner has some pacing and tonal issues that keep it from what might be thought of as the top tier of King
adaptations (King plays a brief and not especially amusing cameo in
Thinner as the town pharmacist). The film
doesn't seem to quite know if it wants to occasionally play some of the hideous mayhem for laughs, and the actors
occasionally seem to be wondering whether they should
really be chewing the scenery as much as some of
them do. But
Thinner also has a playful quality that keeps things moving along in a fairly brisk manner. There
may not in fact be much meat on
Thinner's bones, but for diet food, it's relatively palatable.
