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The Faculty
Good ensemble cast, poor writing
1998
Review: February 19, 2006
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Starring: Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, Josh Hartnett, Shawn Hatosy, Elijah Wood, Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Piper Laurie, Christopher McDonald, Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Patrick, Jon Stewart
Sure, why not?
THE SETUP:
It's the old Invasion of the Body Snatchers routine, this time in a high school.
DISCUSSION:
I had heard this recommended as an excellent stoner comedy [not that I would know what they’re referring to], so I decided to check it out. It has an appealingly dippy concept, and I an get into dippy recent teen comedies [on occasion], I like Seth Green, I appreciate the gusto, if not always the end result, of Robert Rodriguez'’ work... and Famke Janssen, who'’ pretty darn fabulous, let'’ face it.
The movie begins by introducing Devon Sawa as Anton. He is this mega-stoner who does absolutely nothing but smoke, watch TV, and eat. He has these two friends and fellow stoners, played by Seth Green and Elden Henson. Then we have a lot of introduction of many, many characters, including Jordana Brewster as Delilah, a deligtfully off-the-chart mega-bitch. Apparently this part was originally offered to Chrisma Carpenter of Buffy/Angel fame, but she turned it down because the character was too much like Cordelia. Memo to Charisma: Please stop having these attacks of integrity, it will get you nowhere at this stage of your career.
So by 18 minutes in I was saying “isn’t this all kind of going nowhere?” but it turns out that it’s just introducing the ensemble cast of characters, who will mostly share equal time throughout the movie. We’ll come back to this.
It would seem that there’s some Invasion of the Body Snatchers shit going on in the high school [though that refernce is explicitly made, saying that movie was a rip-off of Heinlen’s The Puppet Masters]. So eventually all of the staff is acting really, really—OH my God, I just realized that I STARTED writing about Idle Hands, but soon segued unconsciously into writing about The Faculty. Such are the dangers of watching too many teen horror comedies close together. And another lesson about the dangers of short-term memory loss-inducing substances. Not to mention ultimately how similar the two movies are.
So let’s move on with The Faculty. The Faculty, THAT’s the movie we’re talking about here, ladies and gentlemen. Anyway, faculty acting weird, starting to indoctrinate students, blah blah blah.
It’s cute for a while, but it goes on too long, and goes over the top early and too often. The final 30 minutes turn into a very generic monster movie, and I got a little bored. Partly this is because when you’re offering a new version of a story we’ve seen many versions of before, you have a lot of repetitive scenes, and if you can’t do something different with them it’s all a little dull. The majority of these for me were rip-offs of John Carpenter’s The Thing, because the monsters here take over the shape of their hosts, leading to many versions of that scene where everybody has to take a test to prove who’s human and who’s not. I guess they counted on this version being different because the kids are taking drugs to prove their humanness [and really, aren’t drugs the very thing that make us human?], but not different enough for me. It’s a little funny as all the kids start getting high, but I didn’t feel they really explored how scary it could be if you were super high and a monster started attacking you. It just all stays in the “Aren’t I just so clever?” tone that Kevin Williamson is known for and—what ho—turns out he wrote this film. I wish I [or you, or anyone] could have the idea to re-hash someone else’s stories with slight alterations [to make them Po-Mo!] and thus make a lot of money [if not ensure career longevity], but you know, in a way Charisma Carpenter and I share the same problem.
It’s too bad, because there are a lot of REALLY good things about this movie. Foremost is the wonderful cast. Even the smallest characters are excellently filled out. Going along with that is the interesting virtue that this truly is an ensemble piece, unusual for this kind of film, and all of the characters are delineated well and work together as a whole. So I’m left with having to sound like what I’m sure the screenwriter heard a lot of in school: “Mr. Williamson, you have great strengths as a writer, if you would only choose to apply yourself to a story of more weight.”
The other virtue of the film are some really creative and effective special effects. There are also a bunch of boring old typical CGI effects, too, so don’t run off to rent the film based on that. I must also randomly mention that Laura Harris in this film is a dead ringer in looks and personality for Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks, to the point that I figure it must have been intentional. I also noticed that the soundtrack songs are relentlessly anti-education. I wish I had written down the opening lyric to one of the songs earlier, which said something very dismissive of school, learning, and using one’s brain in any way, but it is quickly followed by a version of the old Pink Floyd “we don’t need no education” song.
SPOILERS > > >
The movie ultimately harms itself by the inclusion of a few dumb conceits that are necessary to achieve the happy ending that obviously we MUST have. The first is the outright stupid idea that if you kill the queen of the bug/fish monsters, that all of her offspring will die and everyone who was once infected will be saved. Now if you have a story like this, I guess you have to have some similar device, or the only option you’re left with is a really bleak “it can’t be stopped”-type ending or some sort of War of the Worlds-like “oops, they all just died” type thing. Or I guess you could go the Signs route and have the aliens just inexplicably change their minds about this whole invasion thing and take off on their own. But no, here we have the conceit that if you kill the big alien, all the small ones will die, which is a bit like saying that if you kill a queen ant or bee all of the other ants and bees in that hive will suddenly die, which is, you know, pretty darn dumb. The other problem is that the aliens are killed by whatever drug the kids are doing, which dries them out. Nevertheless, while a tiny bit of this drug injected into a beast the size of a Winnebago might give it a case of dry eye, it is not going to suck every drop of moisture out of the entire thing until it all crumbles into dust. Maybe these things seem nit-picky to you, and if the movie as a whole were smarter I probably wouldn’t mind… but then again, if the movie as a whole were smarter it wouldn’t include such flat-out dumb plot devices. If you attended even one fourth-grade science class, you are above the level of the story here. Unless you’re one of those intelligent design people, in which case you’ll believe anything.
< < < SPOILERS END
So that’s it. It has some strengths, but they probably aren’t what the filmmakers think they are, and they certainly aren’t what the film is banking on to separate you from your money. Poor teens. They deserve better. Or maybe they don’t.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
No, there are much better movies out there far more deserving of your time.
