Despite the astonishingly cheesy (_especially_ cheesy considering it’s by Alan Silvestri) midi score and bizarre cat chase that opens this movie, it didn’t take long for me to realise that if nothing else, it’s at least a unique ride. I can’t believe I’ve gone so long without ever hearing so much about it – a few weeks ago mention was made of the James Woods story, “Quitters, Inc.”, I think, in Kevin Smith’s Smodcast. I watched this movie for the Drew Barrymore presence and was initially disappointed by her minor (and particularly uncute) appearance in this first part of the movie, but James Woods more than makes up for this disappointment, and it’s certainly one of the more bizarre vignettes I’ve seen.

The second story is just about as unexpectedly manic, but it didn’t win me over so much. I may have just been starting to have Drew withdrawal by this point, but the guy who brought the flight down in Airplane! is (perhaps ironically) just not as much fun to watch as Woods … and the Woods story ended too early, too, it’s worth adding at this point – is it both wrong and a little backwards of me since I claim to love her to have wanted to see Drew in that room hopping up and down like a firecracker? lol. This segment does have a great shocker ending, though.

Finally at the one hour mark, you get a good 30 minutes of Drew, and fortunately she’s much, much cuter on her reappearance. Unfortunately, it’s also the most ridiculous tale of the collection – it features a troll, nuff said. That said, again the ending is fairly outstanding, not only cementing the amazing use of The Police’s song “Every Breath You Take” (well, a cover thereof, at least: the line, “I’ll be watching you,” leaps out when when you hear it earlier in the James Woods story; here it’s the title itself as the troll attempts to steal little Drew’s very breath in her sleep, and she even uses the vinyl record to kill the little critter, which seriously made me laugh too much), but also finishing the movie with a couple of extraordinarily cute shots of Drew, the cat of the title crawling up to her chin, safe at last in bed, and licking her bottom lip. It ultimately rids itself of all its wtf-ness with moments like this, and I’ll happily double bill it with Firestarter, or just about any old horror anthology movie, any number of times in the future.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 at 8:27 pm in 3 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.