{"id":1465,"date":"2024-07-31T03:14:34","date_gmt":"2024-07-31T03:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=1465"},"modified":"2024-10-14T12:45:45","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T16:45:45","slug":"larger-than-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/07\/31\/larger-than-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Larger than Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Larger than Life<\/strong> (1996)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 UA\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (mild language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Howard Franklin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Roy Blount Jr., Pen Densham and Garry Williams\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Miles Goodman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Elliot Davis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 1, 1996 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Bill Murray, Tai, Matthew McConaughey, Janeane Garofalo, Jeremy Piven, Pat Hingle, Linda Fiorentino, Keith David, Tracey Walter, Harve Presnell, Anita Morris, Lois Smith, Maureen Mueller.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $8.3M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\n

\u00a0Maybe it\u2019s old age creeping in, but Larger than Life<\/strong> isn\u2019t as horrible as I remember it being back in \u201996. Oh, it\u2019s lame alright, but it has a precious few mildly amusing bits scattered throughout that hint at what it could have been with more commitment from its talented players and makers.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Director Howard Franklin previously worked with Bill Murray on Quick Change, a nifty little crime caper that nobody went to see in summer \u201990. Murray has a knack for playing detached characters but he seems curiously absent in Larger than Life<\/strong> like he\u2019d rather be anywhere else other than starring alongside an elephant in a dopey road comedy. To be fair, it\u2019s a long way down from Stripes and Ghostbusters.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It would probably suffice to describe the plot of Larger than Life<\/strong> as follows: Bill Murray travels cross-country with an elephant. It\u2019s as apt a description as any. Although tempted, I have to go into more detail. I apologize for it in advance.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Murray plays Jack Corcoran, a third-rate motivational speaker using speaking engagements to hawk his book Get Over It. I\u2019d like to hit pause for a sec to talk about the opening sequence in which Murray\u2019s character builds a human pyramid while addressing the guests at a reclining chair convention. This is one of the bits that tease us with the possibility of what Larger than Life<\/strong> might have been.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Motivational speakers are a perfect target for satire. The idea that they can teach you to solve your problems with a few well-worded rules and dumb exercises like building human pyramids is ridiculous if you really think about it. They\u2019re little more than snake-oil salesmen. A comedy about this subject (minus the pachyderm, of course) would work especially with Murray in the lead. It\u2019s the only time he shows any sign of life in Larger than Life<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Back to the subject at hand, Jack\u2019s life isn\u2019t all that inspirational. His career is at a point where the best his agent (Piven, PCU) can hope for is a speaking gig that leads to an infomercial. The women in his life, his mother (Gillette, Moonstruck) and fiancee (Mueller, The New Age), run it for him. Then at his engagement party, he reads a telegram informing him that his father recently died and left him a huge inheritance. He always thought his father died before he was born, but it turns out his mother lied. She left him because he was \u201cirresponsible\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u00a0ANYWAY, Jack hightails it to the Baltimore office of the attorney (Presnell, Fargo) handing his father\u2019s estate. It turns out Dad was a circus clown and the \u201chuge inheritance\u201d is his pet elephant Vera (Tai, Operation Dumbo Drop). In addition, he owes $35,000 for all the damage caused by Vera running loose in town. Obviously, Jack doesn\u2019t have that kind of money so he decides to sell Vera. It\u2019ll either be to Mo (Garofalo, Reality Bites), a San Diego Zoo employee planning to send a herd of elephants to Sri Lanka for breeding, or Terry (Fiorentino, The Last Seduction), a sadistic trainer in L.A. willing to pay whatever he asks. Either way, he has only three days to get the elephant to California. It won\u2019t be easy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The man and his pachyderm have many misadventures along the way including a run-in with Tip Tucker (McConaughey, A Time to Kill), a crazy trucker with some wild conspiracy theories including a particularly gross one about school lunches. They make an enemy of him after tricking him into driving them part of the way to their destination. Honestly, he\u2019s the only one in Larger than Life<\/strong> that doesn\u2019t phone it in. McConaughey commits to his character full tilt boogie. Tip is a total loon. He livens up the movie more than anyone else, even Tai.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For the most part, Larger than Life<\/strong> follows Murray\u2019s lead in being lazy and laid-back. Movies about people trying to achieve impossible goals should have a lot of energy with characters frustrated to the point of near insanity. It clomps when it should zip along.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The saddest thing about Larger than Life<\/strong> is all the talent is pisses away. I love Garofalo and Fiorentino but they both go sadly underused here. Talk about phoning it in, most of Murray\u2019s interactions with them are over the phone. Piven and Presnell are criminally wasted in underwritten roles in this flat-footed comedy. Same goes for Pat Hingle (Sudden Impact) as an old circus crony of Jack\u2019s dad. Worst of all, none of them seem to even care. They all approach their parts with equal indifference.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For all its faults, Larger than Life<\/strong> has a heart. I must admit to being slightly moved by the scene where one of Vera\u2019s tricks comes in handy during a flood in a small village in New Mexico. The ending would have been more effective if we better understood the relationship between Jack and his fiancee. Then again, the fact that he doesn\u2019t call her even once during his trip tells you everything you need to know. Either that or the writers simply forgot. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised. Why shouldn\u2019t they be allowed to be as lazy as everyone else involved? I\u2019ll also give credit to Tai for turning in one of the best performances I\u2019ve ever seen from an elephant. Is there an Oscar for that? Well, there should be.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Larger than Life (1996)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 UA\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (mild language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Howard Franklin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Roy Blount Jr., Pen Densham and Garry Williams\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Miles Goodman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Elliot Davis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 1, 1996 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Bill Murray, Tai, Matthew McConaughey, Janeane Garofalo, Jeremy Piven, Pat Hingle, Linda Fiorentino, Keith David, Tracey Walter, Harve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Larger-than-Life-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1465"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2730,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1465\/revisions\/2730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}