dierregi
The story goes as follows: a beautiful hirsute blonde, named Lila and played by Arquette, upset by her work experience in a circus' freak show, runs away from society and becomes a famous writer. However, due to sexual urges, she decides to undergo painful (and extremely lengthy) electrolysis on her whole body, to find a sexual partner.During what one can only imagine as extremely tedious and painful epilation sessions, her beautician mentions a screwed-up scientist, who no woman in her right mind could possibly find attractive. For mysterious reasons, Lila is intrigued, met him and falls in love. Unfortunately, electrolysis having not worked its miracles yet, Lila must continue shaving her body regularly. She is keeping her condition a secret and when she moves in with scientist boyfriend Nathan – played by an unbearable Tim Robbins – her secret becomes hard to keep.At this stage, the weird couple runs into a wild ape-man (named Puff) and they decide to take him back to Nathan's lab and train him to behave. It must be noted that the main experiment carried out by Nathan was teaching rats to use the correct fork while eating sitting at a table. Honestly, you cannot make this stuff up
After some idiotic antics involving a slutty lab assistant, Lila gets dumped because her body hair is still not completely gone. So she kidnaps Puff and moves back into the forest, to live naked and happily hereafter with the ape-man.Unfortunately Nathan decides he wants Lila back, despite having moved in with the slutty lab assistant. Tragedy ensues, but honestly who cares? Not a single one of these characters has any lovable (or believable) feature. Starting from the hairy Lila (why would any actress play this part is beyond my understanding), to the sadistic Nathan who wants to teach rats how to use forks, not to mention ape-man Rhys Ifans, afflicted by serious masturbatory problems.The last - but foremost - question I have is the same asked by another reviewer: how does stuff like this get financed? Seriously, who wants to invest in this type of material?
kenjha
Weird comedy about a hairy woman, a man who has lived in the jungles like Tarzan, a scientist who is not endowed like most men, and his over-sexed assistant. With the notable exception of the terrific "Being John Malchovich," Writer Kaufman's comedies tend to start out with intriguing premises but run out of steam long before the movie is over. And so it goes with this one, rambling about with an occasional chuckle (Robbins visiting his parents and noticing a little boy at the dinner table), but unable to sustain interest over the long haul. Otto is alluring as a scientist; Arquette with her body covered with hair is not.
Joseph Sylvers
Franz Kafka's "A Report To An Academy" is the story of an ape testifying before an academy the story of how he learned to speak and think like a human and why. Though he comes to love music and eventually accepts his fate, he admits that he only began learning from his human teachers as a way to escape from his cage. Michel Gondry's "Human Nature", is one of the earliest Charlie Kaufman(Bieng John Malkovich, Adaptation) scripts , and it takes Kafka's story and modernizes it in unexpected ways. A woman with a rare condition which causes her to grow hair all over her body in vast amounts, forsakes the world and becomes a nature writer, who leaves her isolation only to find a mate. Tom Robbins plays this mate, a fastidious, obsessive compulsive, scientist obsessed with teaching table manners to mice. The two then meet a man who was raised as an ape by his father who went insane after the Kennedy assassination, and the scientist and his now shaved assistant decide to make an example of the ape-man by civilizing him. If this sounds a bit ridiculous I should also add that there are three different versions of the story being narrated by Tim Robbins from the afterlife to whatever powers that be, Patricia Arquette to the police in an interrogation room, and Rhys Ifans (our ape man) testifying before congress. A funny, ingeniously smart, wonderfully stylized film, from a writer director team who would go on to "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind". All performances are also top notch, in this criminally under seen, and fascinating film. Recommend | add comment
Pablo Picasso
This film really looks at the struggle of one's self to either adapt to society's standards and thrive in the modern world or indulge in the primal urges of our instincts and primitive emotions, but from a point of view so as to not put the viewer off with its message. The whimsical method of the storytelling in the movie combines a subtle, almost childish sense of humor with an underlying angst that is almost too faded to notice. If you enjoyed childhood tales like Jack and the Beanstalk, this modernized fairy-tale will appeal to your inner child, but make sure you don't overlook the underlying message, or you might miss what makes this flick deserve a second look from anyone tired of the "same old same old".
AD
