Willard: Movie Review, DVD Review (2003)

(Originally published 2003)

Written and directed by Glen Morgan, based on a screenplay by Gilbert Ralston, 105 minutes, PG-13.

Just to keep things in perspective as Hollywood takes tentative steps toward its biggest night of the year, along comes Glen Morgan’s "Willard," a movie about rats competing for a different sort of reward.

The film, a remake of the 1971 original, stars Crispin Glover as Willard, a Norman Bates wannabe so relentlessly hen-pecked by his overbearing mother, Henrietta (Jackie Burroughs), and so cruelly berated by his boss, Frank (R. Lee Ermey), that he does what any sensible person would do in a similar situation. That’s right, he befriends scores of rats and enlists them to do his dirty work.

With a blistering edge that’s sometimes uncomfortably dark, Morgan’s movie is all flash and style, favoring camp over substance, a misreading of the original film, which had heart in spite of its B-movie underpinnings.

The new film begins promisingly with a slick title sequence that seems inspired by the work of Darren Aronofsky and David Fincher as filtered through a Nine Inch Nails video--lots of sketchy, scratchy images seething with malice. After that, the movie is off and slumming through Tim Burton territory, digging deep into the well of Willard’s basement to find a treasure of tiny souls eager for his affection.

To earn it, these rats--which multiply at a rate that suggests Willard’s basement is the city’s red light district--must learn a wealth of tactical maneuvers, such as how to chew through tires, wires and walls, and then, as Willard’s home and work life become unreasonably hostile, how to attack on command.

Helping Willard is his favorite rat, Socrates--a genial, white puff of snow--and also his least-favorite rat, Ben, a lumbering sewer beast who longs for Willard’s affection the very way that Willard himself longs for the world’s affection. Unable to see the connection, Willard rejects Ben, thus igniting his rage and turning this movie into a fierce tug of war between the two.

Unfortunately, what Morgan never explains is the reason Willard rejects Ben and ultimately comes to mistreat him. Why does he dislike him so? By not exploring that crucial thread, this already fragile movie snaps, with all of the sympathy going to the rats and none of it to Willard, who, in the end, surfaces from the basement as the real beast.

Grade: C+

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