Spun (2002)

Looks like SOMEBODY just got out of film school

First of all, if these people were all on crank, their houses wouldn't be so dirty.

This is what I refer to as a "Headache Movie." That's a movie that employs a lot of high-octane camera and editing tricks with accompanying wooshing noises (not to mention characters who lack any motivation but the screenwriter's desire to be "out there") in a pathetic bid to take up the slack for an inane and witless script. Yawn.

A hyperactive, yet dull, irritatingly cartoonish "antic" drug movie that relentlessly riffs on far better films, which only serves to throw its own bankruptcy of intelligence and imagination into high relief by association. It's supposed to be funny/edgy - but it fails on both counts. It's about as funny as a hemorrhoid. Granted, some people think hemorrhoids are funny, but most of those people are well under the minimum age the MPAA has set for seeing this movie. And in order to be edgy, it would probably have to have characters who appear to be human in SOME sense - not the vapid, unbelievable creations of a screenwriter with delusions of cleverness. Whacked out meth heads, as obnoxious as they can be, don't even act the way the exaggerated ciphers in this movie do. It's an illicit drug dramedy (emphasis on the comic part of the equation, but don't get your hopes up - it's mostly groans and rolling eyeballs) for juvenile twenty-somethings with ADD.

An abject waste of celluloid - and a crashing bore, despite all the ridiculous visual gymnastics, and desperate zaniness. Nothing can disguise the fact that watching this movie is ultimately like looking at nothing for an hour and a half. It's full of irritating music video moments, too - the merchandising department obviously had a hand in, as far as the soundtrack goes. The hastily tacked on, and all too expected, 'Drugz R 4 Loozerz' ending rings powerfully hollow after the preceding 90 minutes of desperate wallowing to try and make it seem exciting - I'd say even more hollow than the rest of the film, but under the circumstances, that's just not possible to achieve.

This style of filmmaking, by the way, constitutes a new cliche as much as the tone of any J-horror rip off or the overworked tapestry-of-interconnected-lives structure that has become a plague on the arthouses of late. Maybe there should be a rule: filmmakers aren't allowed to watch anyone else's movies. Don't people get tired of seeing the same half-digested garbage regurgitated over and over again? Do the fanboy punks that evidently populate the film department at UCLA not have lives and imaginations of their own to draw upon? Are they giving awards now for 'most frantic,' for movies like this that throw everything at the screen but a logically written script - you know, like you can force quality on something as long as there's some new ridiculousness every few seconds? That's not a movie. That's called trying too hard. It is also called not trying hard enough. And I believe the laboratory term is FAILURE.

'Requiem for a Dream' also employed aural and visual gimmicks from one end to the other, but it actually worked a lot better than it should have - maybe because some thought actually went into when, where and why, and they weren't just trying to cram in the razzmataz anywhere they could fit it in. That movie wasn't a comedy, but it also manages one or two moments of genuine humor, which is one or two more than you'll find in this alleged yuk-fest. April 30, 2008

You May See Yourself

Every time I watch Spun, I can't help but smile thinking that John Leguizamo was the cute little voice for one of the furry characters in that kids movie Ice Age. In Spun, we find him having phone sex with a lesbian biker (played by Debbie Harry of Blondie) on the other line and he's jumping up and down on the bed working his aparatus thats covered with a sock. It's disturbing and pathetic, but darkly humorous. There is also a spot where Rob Halford of the rock band Judas Priest plays a porn shop clerk. If you are homophobic and one of those macho type males who likes Judas Priest, you may be shocked and may never listen to Priest again. I found the opening theme song, The Number of the Beast, done better than the original creators of that song- Iron Maiden, on any good day! All together, I think the film is a harsh view of a dark reality and what its really like to be on meth and around people who lost all moral ethical values. It speaks of the great apathy of today's youth and so called adults. These are guidless and lost characters, no worse than some people who don't have any drug problems at all and appear to be quite "normal" in society. But there are troubles deep under the facades. A film for the naive and anyone who is curious to see how desparate characters live. You may see yourself. April 26, 2008

crazy

This movie is seriously "SPUN" unless you had a drug addiction to crank you would not understand this particular movie. the people in this video played their roles very well. April 6, 2008

Not as bad as I thought it was.

Spun (Jonas Akerlund, 2002)

The DVD box for Spun has a blurb on it calling it "a classic of drug cinema". Which strikes me as saying "the cutest hemorrhagic fever imaginable" or something like that. When you're in a genre containing such deathless film classics as Half Baked and How High?, it doesn't strike me that you really have to reach all that high to grab the bar, now, do you?

The story revolves around Ross (Rushmore's Jason Schwartzman, whose career has been downhill ever since). Ross is the guy with the car, which makes him very important-- none of the other major characters has one. Ross and his friends (and the series of oddballs he meets on the way), you see, are tweakers-- crystal meth addicts. Most of them, aside from being too stoned to drive, don't have cars because, presumably, they've hocked them to get money to fuel their addictions. But someone's gotta do the driving, and that someone is Ross. As it opens, we meet Ross, his paranoid dealer Spider Mike (John Leguizamo), and Spider Mike's two houseguests, Nikki (Brittany Murphy) and Cookie (Mena Suvari). As things progress, Ross is introduced to Cookie's boyfriend, The Cook (Mickey Rourke), Spider Mike's supplier, who also needs some driving done. The Cook hires Ross to do some driving for him. Which is great, Ross needs the money (and the drugs), except that Ross has his girlfriend (Chloe Hunter, whose body famously appears on the poster for American Beauty) tied to the bed in his apartment. (Why? We don't know.) Along the way, we meet a number of other assorted weirdos, the most interesting of whom is Frisbee (Deadbirds' Patrick Fugit), a black metal devotee who gets involved in a very bizarre love triangle with Spider Mike and Nikki. Plot? Forget plot. This is a slice-of-very-strange-life movie.

When I was watching Spun, I hated it. To some extent, I still do. But a week or so later, I find myself impressed with a number of aspects of the movie. Kudos to both Suvari and Murphy, both of whom have been typecast as glamour girls for years, for taking roles that are unglamorous in the extreme. The number of cameos in the movie is astounding-- Deborah Harry, Ron Jeremy, Billy Corgan, Rob Halford, Peter Stormare, and I'm only touching the tip of the iceberg. And for a plotless movie, it does go by quickly (this could well have to do with the insane editing-- Akerlund normally makes his paycheck as a music video director, and the camerawork here has a great deal in common with his infamous video for The Prodigy's "Smack My [...] Up"). Schwartzman is just kind of pulled along by everything, but a number of the other performances in here range from the competent (Harry, Fugit, Suvari) to the downright wicked (this may well be Rourke's best role since Angel Heart). And while the whole movie doesn't hold up, there are some blisteringly funny scenes (Corgan has one line, but in the greater context of its scene, it's hysterical).

So-- not as awful as I first thought, but I probably won't be sitting through it again any time soon. **
January 3, 2008

STYLISH & ENGROSSING LOOK INTO A SEEDY WORLD!

Watching this film, which plays like a drug addict's nightmare in rehab, was disturbing! It is really a fascinating film which will make you laugh and repulse you at the same time. The entire cast play very realistic pathetic characters with some interesting camera work and animated cut scenes round out this very original film. This film isn't for everyone, but if you like these types of movies, this is a must see! The DVD transfer is very good and there are some cool extras. October 7, 2007

More reviews at Amazon.com ...