#18

So I finally managed to get time to watch a movie. With all the Olympics and series that I've been watching lately it was kind of hard to find 100 minutes of continous time to watch a movie.
But before I go into reviewing it I want to say something that I'll do different starting with this review:

I have been avoiding spoilers as much as possible because I didn't want to ruin the movies for anybody but since the texts I write are reviews I will stop avoiding spoilers by all means and I will write the reviews as they come into my mind without censoring them.
So:

There will be spoilers on this site from now on and they will not be marked in any way!

And there will also be no differentiation between plot and review anymore. There will just be a review part that contains both, plot and my thoughts on the movie.

But to get started:

The Big White




Director: Mark Mylod


Cast: Robin Williams ("Paul Barnell"), Holly Hunter ("Margaret Barnell"), Giovanni Ribisi ("Ted"), Woody Harrelson ("Raymond Barnell"), Alison Lohman ("Tiffany")


Review: Paul Barnell is broke. He owns a travel agency in the middle of Alaska and nobody is ever booking any flights. But Paul has other problems: His wife seems to have Tourrette syndrome and his brother Raymond has been missing for five years. But the latter seems to become a positive fact, because Raymond had a $1,000,000 life insurance which Paul wants to be paid out to him. But there is one little problem: In Alaska, a man can only be declared dead after seven years. But Paul needs the money immediately. One night he stumbles across a dead body in a dumpster next to his agency. This seems to be perfect. He takes the body home, makes everybody believe that raymond has come home and then simulates his death. everthing seems to work out fine, but then there is Ted, an employee at the insurance company, who wants to save the company money so that they transfer him to another place. He lives with his girlfriend who works as a self-employed telephone psychic.
In the meantime, the guys who killed "Raymond" come back to the dumpster to get the body back to their employer since he wants prove that they did the job. When they hear that a body has turned up, they go to Paul's house and kidnap his wife Margaret. And to make it even worse, the real Raymond turns up because he has read about his death in the paper.
So Paul tells the gangsters that he got $50,000 from the insurance company and that he'll give them half of it and then he tells Raymond that he got $100,000 and wants to share it with him.

"The Big White" is a weird comedy though and through. But weird in very charming and entertaining way. It all starts when Paul finds the body and wants to make everybody believe it's Raymond. To make the body hard to identify he kicks it off a cliff and puts meat and bacon on it, so that the wolves will eat it. As crazy as the idea is it works out. But Ted doesn't believe Paul and he finds evidence to prove that he is right. When Paul gets beaten up by Raymond, he goes to Ted's boss to tell him that Ted beat him up. So he gets the check.
As strange as the plot is, the characters are what make the movie remarkable:
There is Paul, played by Robin Williams, a loser who loves his wife very much and who tries to do everything to make her better.
Then there is Margaret, played wonderfully by the beautiful and talented Holly hunter, Paul's wife who has completely lost it and thinks she has Tourrette.
Also, we have Ted, played by a terrificly over-the-top-ambitious Giovanni Ribisi, who wants to get the hell out of Alaska and gets more and more affected by Paul's case. Over this he nearly loses his flaky girlfriend Tiffany, who is portrayed by the absolutely cute and gorgeous Alison Lohman. Tiffany tries to make a living as a telephone psychic. She really loves Ted, but he starts to care less for her after he was assigned to Paul's case.
Finally there is Raymond, played by Woody Harrelson, who seems to be completely out of his mind.
And then there are the two gangster, Jimbo and Gary, who establish some kind of a sick friendshipy relation to Margaret while they kidnap her.

The movie ends with a showdown on a glacier outlook, where Paul is supposed to exchange the $50,000 and the body in exchange for his wife, but Ted tries to stop them. This is the moment when Raymond appears, kicks Ted in the balls, runs towards Paul and finally shoots at Margaret because he can't shoot at his brother.

To sum it up, "The Big White" is a very kind and warm comedy even though it deals with death and betrayal. Holly Hunter was 47 by the time the movie was shot, but she looks incredibly beautiful and sweet. Alison Lohman is, without a doubt, the most beautiful actress born in the 70's and this is with Heather Graham, Angelina Jolie, Live Tyler, Cameron Diaz and Mena Suvari as a competition.

8,3 out of 10 frozen bodies

That'll be it for today. I will be back with my personal review of "The Dark Knight" either Wednesday night or Thursday afternoon. So stick around if you want to know Fox's way of thinking about the "Best Movie of the last 20 years".