woof ! too bad that leap of faith was the title of a 1992 comedy starring steve martin and debra winger , because that’s what’s required to watch this incredulous howler starring bruce willis as–of all things–a psychologist .
not since the reagan administration has there been an acting stretch of such magnitude !
alas , mickey rourke , we hardly knew ye .
story opens with a campy kick–willis is treating a patient who abruptly steps out of the window to take the best flying leap since charles durning dove in the hudsucker proxy .
she goes splat , he goes ugh , and his character spends the rest of the film colorblind .
really .
the good doctor then moves to sunny l . a . , where he rooms with an old college chum ( scott bakula ) , a therapist who’s getting death threats from someone in his monday evening group .
buddy bites it in the second reel ( no surprise there ) and willis agrees to take over both the group and the death threats .
for his troubles as therapy man , willis gets to share some cut-from-nc17 love scenes with the lover’s jane march while dodging nails , cars , and rattlesnakes .
why’d it have to be snakes ?
color of night is the worst movie of the year .
period .
forget north , clifford , or , heaven help us , even on deadly ground .
here is a movie misfire so audaciously awful that you can’t help but wonder how the actors all kept straight faces while filming .
for starters , the ” group ” is a collection of mixed nuts better suited to bob newhart than bruce willis .
these are realistic portrayals of the mentally unhealthy ?
playing a prissy obsessive/compulsive , cuckoos nest alumni brad dourif , alone , may set the psychology profession back ten years .
the plot’s a wreck with laughable dialogue , pointless pov shifts , and the one big secret solvable in the first fifteen minutes .
director richard rush , who once helmed freebie and the bean , doesn’t seem to mind .
unfazed by the nincompoop plot and cuckoo characterizations , he overfills the film with enough canny camera shots and zany set-pieces to make the effort almost worth watching .
his token freeway chase is ok , but the director has more fun with a vertiginous ending ala ( most recently ) fatal analysis .
acting credits are across-the-board awful .
willis can be forgiven because he’s filming die hard 3 as we speak .
but what about ruben blades insulting presence as the cop ?
or lesley ann warren’s stereotypical sex addict ?
or worst offender jane march as a mystery-girl-who’s-no-real-mystery ?
shudder .
bottom line : how they all kept straight faces , i’ll never know .