Crazy In Alabama
Following the incomprehensible success of Double Jeopardy, here's
another inept movie about a homicidal wife made by a non-American director.
Adapted from the breezy, '60s-set Mark Childress bestseller by Spanish actor
Antonio Banderas in his feature debut, Crazy in Alabama features
Banderas's wife, Melanie Griffith, as Lucille, an Alabama mother of seven who
snaps one day when her abusive husband mocks her dream of heading to Hollywood
to star on Bewitched. She offs him with d-Con, cuts off his head and
puts it in Tupperware, drops off the kids at her mom's, and hightails it
westward, but not before establishing a bond with her orphaned nephew Peejoe
(Lucas Black, the best thing in the movie despite the relentless voiceover
narration). Peejoe's got his own education in oppression to undergo, as the
town of Industry where he is staying with his undertaker uncle Dove (a
nondescript David Morse) is being racked by the civil-rights movement.
Laboriously intercutting the two tales to make its clumsy points about freedom,
guilt, and celebrity, Crazy doesn't go really crazy until near the end,
when Rod Steiger takes over as a judge and demonstrates what an overbaked
Southern ham is like.
-- Peter Keough
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