Extras:
Making of, Trailers, Director's Commentary
Director:
Michel Gondry
(Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Human Nature, The Letter, The Science of Sleep, Music videos: Bjork, Massive Attack)
Producer:
Anthony Bregman, Ted Hope, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman
Screenplay:
Charlie Kaufman
Music :
Graeme Revell
Cast :
Lila Jute: Patricia Arquette
Puff: Rhys Ifans
Nathan Bronfman: Tim Robbins
Nathan's Father: Robert Forster
Louise: Rosie Perez
Gabrielle: Miranda Otto
Given how director Michel Gondry
was responsible for some of the music videos from Massive Attack and Bjork,
in the latter namely, Human Behaviour, Army of Me, Isobel, Hyperballad,
Joga and Bachelorette - so, all the really weird ones.
So, just 20 minutes into Human Nature I began to wonder whether
any of that excellence would be invested into what was becoming a complete
bore-fest told in flashback. I also wanted to know where the jokes were, since
this is meant to be a comedy. Sadly, the remaining 72 minutes did nothing
to change my opinion. No-one should bother to even rent this film, let alone
buy it.
As the film begins, author Lila Jute (Patricia Arquette) has been
arrested and will spend the rest of her life in jail, Puff (a very hirstute
Rhys Ifans) is up in court and animal experiment Dr Nathan Bronfman (Tim Robbins)
is having an even worse time than those two put together, since he's dead,
in heaven, with a bullet hole in his head.
At the age of 12, Lila was diagnosed with a condition that left her being
extremely hairy, even to the point of living in the woods at the age of 20
and naked, because she felt she could best associate herself with wildlife.
Yes, Patricia Arquette is in the buff, but there's nothing to see because she's
covered in excess hair like an ape.
Puff is an ape-like man who is brought out of the wild and into civilisation
and the film tracks his progress and how it interwines with the lives of
Lila, Nathan, Lila's electrolisyst, Louise (Rosie Perez) and Nathan's
lab partner and bit-on-the-side, Gabrielle (Miranda Otto).
Seems like the better alternative to watching this tripe.
The film is presented in anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen and has no problems,
but also has nothing to stand out in it either. The sound is in Dolby Digital
5.1, but as a comedy/drama it gets little use and certainly none of note.
The extras are very thin on the ground:
Human Nature featurette (6 mins):
The main stars talk about the film. This serves more as an extended trailer
and provides nothing new to think about. Presented in 4:3 with non-anamorphic
widescreen film clips.
Teaser Trailers (7 minutes):
Ten of them, if you must.
Director's Commentary:
Maybe it's 92 minutes of Michel Gondry apologising for this god-awful
excuse for a movie. I didn't bother to find out.
The film contains 16 chapters, subtitles are available in English only and the
main menu is static, but scored with a looped piece of music from the film.
In the scores below, the only thing that saves this disc is a reasonable
sound and picture. As for the content within, forget it entirely.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
