NOTFlix It: Eye of the Beholder

Editor's Note: NOTFlix It is a feature meant to draw attention to older films some readers might have missed, and might consider adding to their Netflix queue, or renting at their local DVD store. Unlike our Netflix It feature, NOTFlix It is designed to keep viewers far away from all the dogs that are out there. The following review of "Eye of the Beholder" is the original 1999 review. And you definitely should NOTFlix It.



If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then so is trash, which is precisely what one beholds for nearly two hours during Stephan Elliott’s painfully dull, inept and ridiculous thriller, “Eye of the Beholder.”

The film has all the vision of a blinded Cyclops, all the flash of a burlap bag, all the cool sophistication of worn-out femme fatale.

It’s a pillaging Hun that references a wealth of other films, including Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” and “Rear Window,” Coppola’s “The Conversation,” Powell’s “Peeping Tom,” De Palma’s “Obsession,” and Besson’s “La Femme Nikita.”

But a crime has been committed here and that crime, as far as audiences are concerned, is dire: Elliott completely misses what made these other films work--a strong, literate script charged with interesting, fully developed and believable characters.

Unfortunately, nothing in “Beholder” is interesting, nothing is developed, nothing is believable.

As directed by Elliott, whose 1994, Academy Award-winning “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” was a knockout, “Beholder” is an utter failure, a film that confounds from start to finish with its muddled script and sheer lack of understanding of what works in a thriller--and what doesn’t.

The film stars Ashley Judd as Joanna Eris, a wig-wearing psycho who murders her lovers for reasons that are never once made clear. Did they somehow cross her? Were they bad in bed? Did they criticize her wigs? Who can say why she kills--certainly not The Eye (Ewan McGregor), a British intelligence agent who literally lives in a belfry and who goes all doe-eyed over Joanna after he witnesses her stabbing her boyfriend to death.

Indeed, instead of exploring who Joanna is or why The Eye falls madly in love with her, the film is more interested in what Joanna wears, what glamorous city The Eye follows her to, what cliché the script can haul out next.

With k.d. lang on board in a silly, wooden performance as The Eye’s silly, wooden advisor, “Eye of the Beholder” is as lackluster as milquetoast, a dull, myopic waste of time that blatantly steals its audience’s cash and never should have been beheld at all.

Grade: F