Rear Window 1998 (TV)

Lat night Books and I watched the Christopher Reeves version of Rear Window. It wasn't really all that bad. I mean, it wasn't good, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Reeve does a good job, especially considering he can only act with his face. It seemed like they threw a lot of elements of Reeve's own life in there. The way he has to clack his teeth together to alert the nurse during an emergency. He can't cry out sometimes because his throat gets really dry and his respirator cacked out a few times. Actually, the opening twenty minutes of the film looked as though they had shot "The Christopher Reeve Story", and then changed their minds later on into shooting it. It really goes on about this accident the character had, and his rehabilitation, and his search for a cure (no one believes him, but he swears that the latest medical research indicates that a cure exists for paralysis from the neck down). They seemingly shot a lot more of this plot line, but then of course, it reverts to the classic tale of peeping-gone-wrong. The original version that Hitchcock did is a really good movie, so it's understandably a difficult remake.

Reeve himself describes it as more of a "re-telling" than a remake. He says that it's only similar insofar as it involves a disabled man who spies on his neighbours with a camera and concludes that a murder has been committed.

It was weird watching this flick because you do feel bad for Reeve. It would fucking suck to become a quadraplegiac quite suddenly. Suck. But Reeve is fairly righteous. He has more than one line about how expensive/difficult it is to be disabled in America -- but I don't think nearly enough time has passed in the story that he would have really experienced this. Christopher Reeve yes, but not his character, Jason Kemp. Also, someone tells him that he's going to lock a door (for some reason I don't remember). Then Kemp says: "You don't know what I'd give to turn a lock." Okay well, come on, really? I mean how many of us would miss turning a lock? It's not like that in itself is a truly pleasurable experience. It's that attitude of: How Dare You Take Things For Granted. But they're kind of the wrong things.

Books thinks that they desperately wanted to cast Bobby McFerrin as Reeve's sidekick in the movie, because the guy they did cast is kind of a poor man's B.McF.

Since the accident, Reeve's voice sounds a lot more like Ron Howard's.

Reeve's character in the movie, Jason Kemp, is a divorced architect. Naturally Daryl Hannah falls for him by the end and they make out. However, there is little to no, to negative sexual tension generated by these two. I'm sure Christopher wasn't feeling all that sexy at this point. Anyhow, there's a great part where Hannah looks at pictures of Reeve before the accident. There's one of him leaning over a railing outdoors at some cottage, and one of him giving a speech somewhere.

It's just amazing that a bachelor would have two pictures of himself on his kitchen counter. There's no one else in the shots. Just him. He just looks at himself and thinks back to when he went to that cottage alone, or to the time when he gave that speech. Why doesn't anybody consider how stupid this kind of thing is? This is a good indication of why most directors are hacks. The filmmakers have decided that they need Hannah to see what Jason looked like before the accident, so she can get all horny for him. Fine. They probably also decided that they couldn't have a picture of him with another woman, like his ex-wife -- after all, he and Daryl Hannah need to experience sexual tension unencumbered by any other distracting force whatsoever. So now Reeve's character is the kind of guy that has solo shots of himself looking handsome all over his apartment. Retarded.

Here's a long review of Rear Window from a very biased fan.

Posted by King at Julio 22, 2002 03:32 PM