Willard (2003)
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A lonely man who lives with his mother is having problems at his work. Because his dad once owned the company that Willard works for and his mother is a good friend of the present owner, Willard keeps his job. But the day she dies is the day his career will end…and that day is now. Pushed around by everyone before and now getting fired, Willard has had enough. Now with the help of his only friend, some city rodents, he will seek revenge on everyone who has wronged him.
Overall: I got a few things to say about this movie, one of which is “SLOW”!!!!!!!!!!!!! I couldn’t wait for this film to finally get to the point and after 1 hour and Willard hasn’t even left his job yet , I knew I’d been in for a long evening. Ok, at 100 minutes, it isn’t that long but this film easily could have cut big chunks out and the film would have been better. They spent entirely too much time on the transition of Willard hating rats and then loving them but they never explain how the rats come to worship Willard (or the “head-rat” Ben) or even understand English. There are many plot veins which should have just been excised out and made this a shorter, more concise film but after watching the deleted scenes with commentary, I am convinced that the director (Glen Morgan) wouldn’t have “had a clue.” The movie is just so slow and plodding and unrealistic and yet as the commentary goes on you hear the director say “The studio made me cut this due to time,” or “the studio wanted this cut to move the story on quicker.” But you can hear the contempt and condescension in his voice. He wanted a 2+ hour film (adding the deleted scenes back in, you’d get it) but this film never should have exceeded 80-90 minutes. It tried to develop a story between the replacement worker and Willard and then cut out the scene where they bond. They added scenes of the rat “Socrates” and Willard bonding but basically the film is only about “Ben.” “Ben” always seems to be in charge and yet all he (the rat) does is stand around and watch – no shots hinting at communication between the rats or even hints as to why there are so many rats or why even there was a rat problem at this house and no one else’s. At times Willard embraces the revenge that he thinks Ben is supporting him to achieve and yet the next scene Willard is unhappy with Ben because of Ben’s jealousy towards “Socrates.” Rat jealousy? Maybe this is an Oedipus Complex? The ending as it is isn’t that good given the fall Willard takes on the stairway and yet the director was very unhappy with his test audiences that blasted the original one. The contempt in his voice discussing the original ending and the reviews his film got prove this guy really doesn’t have a clue as to what he is doing. He blasts the audiences for not liking the original ending, the studio for the “r” rating change to “pg-13” and the studio for the slimming of scenes to make the story “move along.” But he never takes any responsibility for the failure of the film to be very good or even be noticed by audiences. And he named the cat “Scully” and blamed the audience for confusing this film for digs at “X-Files” – sorry Glen, “X-Files” is such a hit that anyone would wonder why you were calling a character “Scully” or “Mulder.” So Glen is now mad the audience forced him to cut “perfectly good scenes” for “no apparent reason.” This is why Glen probably won’t get another directing job (this was his first) and have to go back to being the tv show writer that he is better at. Comparison: The Pied Piper meets Of Unknown Origin |
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