{"id":8224,"date":"2024-11-12T00:18:04","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T05:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=8224"},"modified":"2024-11-12T00:18:20","modified_gmt":"2024-11-12T05:18:20","slug":"the-animal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/12\/the-animal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Animal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Animal <\/strong>(2001)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 83 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (some crude and sexual humor)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Luke Greenfield\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Rob Schneider and Tom Brady\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Teddy Castellucci\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Peter Lyons Collister\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 1, 2001 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Rob Schneider, Colleen Haskell, John C. McGinley, Guy Torry, Edward Asner, Michael Caton, Louis Lombardi, Norm McDonald.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $84.7M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: \u00bd *<\/p>\n

\u00a0Okay kids, it\u2019s time for bed. Settle down please. Johnny, jump into the bed not on it. No more apple juice, Susie. You\u2019ve had enough. You\u2019ll be tinkling all night, that\u2019s why. Hey, who wants a bedtime story? You do? Then lay back, close your eyes and listen as I tell you the story of The Animal<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Once upon a time there was a man named Marvin Mange (Schneider, Deuce Bigalow), an awkward evidence room clerk who really wants to be a police officer but can\u2019t because he\u2019s too short and weak to finish the obstacle course. All the other policemen are mean to him especially Sgt. Sisk (McGinley, Point Break) who picks on him for the same reasons as every bully EVER.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Then one day while Marvin is minding the station, a robbery call comes in. Since all the other cops are off playing softball (Marvin wasn\u2019t invited), he answers the call himself. On the way, he gets into a bad accident and almost dies. Luckily, a doctor (Caton, The Castle) finds him and fixes him all up. When Marvin returns home (with no memory of what happened), he\u2019s different. He\u2019s stronger, faster and able to sniff things out in people\u2019s butts. That\u2019s how he catches a drug smuggler at the airport and becomes a local hero. He\u2019s also made a real policeman which makes Sgt. Sisk even meaner. Marvin soon finds out why he\u2019s been acting like an animal since the accident. The doctor who saved him is a mad doctor who replaced all his broken parts with animal parts as an experiment. Now Marvin behaves like one.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Physically, Marvin is a better version of himself even though he\u2019s just as clumsy. The problem is that he hasn\u2019t yet learned how to control his animal instincts. He can\u2019t stop himself from chasing frisbees, eating out of the trash, humping mailboxes and putting the moves on barnyard animals. After a particularly embarrassing incident involving a cat at a fancy garden party, Marvin distinguishes himself by saving the mayor\u2019s son from drowning in a nearby lake, acting like a dolphin while doing so.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Marvin\u2019s love life gets better too. He meets a cute environmentalist named Rianna (Haskell from the first season of Survivor) who works at an animal shelter. After a weird meet-cute in a men\u2019s room (insert fart joke here), they go on a date to a vegetarian restaurant where Marvin proceeds to lick her, make loud, post-arousal animal noises in the men\u2019s room and mark his territory in an effort to fend off the advances of an amorous Italian waiter openly hitting on Rianna. Yes Johnny, it means peeing on the floor. Yes Susie, they fall in love. May I continue? Thank you.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Marvin gets into trouble when livestock starts turning up dead at local farms. The description given to the police of a hairy man running from the scene looks just like him. He can\u2019t say for sure if he did it or not. Some mornings, he wakes up in strange places with no memory of how he got there. Maybe he is a killer. He barricades himself in his home (a garage) by building a beaver dam. One night, Rianna comes to see him. He tells her the truth about himself before asking her to tie him up. Then they….. Johnny? Susie? Oh good, they\u2019re finally asleep. Good night, kids, sweet dreams. I\u2019ll just tiptoe out of the room and quietly close the door. There we go. Now let\u2019s really talk about The Animal<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0If not for all the crude humor and sex stuff, The Animal<\/strong> would be ideal for kids. The premise alone sounds like one of those dopey live-action comedies Disney made in the 70s. It probably would have starred Kurt Russell, Joe Flynn, Phil Silvers and Michael McGreevey. It might even have been funny. At the very least, it would have been funnier than this cow pie of a movie. In its present form, The Animal<\/strong> is spectacularly unfunny. In fact, it doesn\u2019t even deserve to be mentioned in the same review as the word \u201ccomedy\u201d. That it came out the same year as Corky Romano and Zoolander makes me surprised comedy survived the year of 9\/11.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Scheider is neither the first nor last SNL star to not make a successful jump to big screen stardom. Let me qualify that remark. He\u2019s okay as a supporting player- e.g. Home Alone 2, Demolition Man- and a bit player in several Adam Sandler vehicles (\u201cYou can do it!\u201d). He doesn\u2019t cut it as a leading man.\u00a0 He\u2019s an annoying little twerp capable of working the nerves of every adult in the room within two minutes of entering it. I really don\u2019t find him all that funny. He\u2019s made some stinkers and The Animal<\/strong> is right at the bottom of the list with the second Deuce Bigalow movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0His chemistry with co-star Haskell is non-existent. It\u2019s not entirely his fault; half of it is hers. She\u2019s cute, but she can\u2019t act. I don\u2019t what possessed the makers to cast her instead of an established comedy actress. If I had to guess, I\u2019d say no actress in her right mind would go anywhere near The Animal<\/strong>. McGinley brings immaturity to a new low with his performance. Guy Torry (American History X) plays a friend of Marvin\u2019s who thinks everybody around him is guilty of reverse racism. His character is an offensive racial stereotype. And would somebody please tell me what Edward Asner (The Mary Tyler Moore Show) is doing here? To his credit, he looks sufficiently embarrassed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Animal<\/strong> even fails on the most fundamental levels of cinema (as if that term even applies). It\u2019s poorly put together. Scenes are strung together in a way that only vaguely resembles a real movie. At a scant 83 minutes, which is TOO long for this movie, it\u2019s clear the studio did some serious cutting before unleashing it on an undeserving public. Given how NOT funny everything in The Animal<\/strong> is, I shudder to think what was deemed too unfunny to leave in.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Movies like The Animal<\/strong> make me think about the bit in the Constitution about cruel and unusual punishment and how it should also apply to movie audiences. There\u2019s no crime that heinous to warrant such treatment of another human. The indignity of….. uh oh, it sounds like the kids are awake again. Let me go check on them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Oh, you guys want to know how The Animal<\/strong> ends? All right, everything turns out okay for Marvin and he lives happily ever after, the end. Now go to sleep. Good night… again.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Animal (2001)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 83 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (some crude and sexual humor)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Luke Greenfield\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Rob Schneider and Tom Brady\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Teddy Castellucci\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Peter Lyons Collister\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 1, 2001 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Rob Schneider, Colleen Haskell, John C. McGinley, Guy Torry, Edward Asner, Michael Caton, Louis Lombardi, Norm McDonald.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8415,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies","category-this-sucks-so-bad"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/The-Animal-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\/8224","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=8224"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8417,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8224\/revisions\/8417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}