Word: comically
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...elaborately dressed kids' movie--about a board game that sucks its players into a perilous jungle overrun by lions, rhinos, monkeys, crocodiles and spiders--spends so much time on the how of special effects that it neglects the why of characterization. Jumanji wastes the gifts of two terrific comic actors, Robin Williams and David Alan Grier, and some other good people (Kirsten Dunst, Bonnie Hunt). Like the viewer, everyone on-screen pretty much sits back, gets strapped in and takes a bumpy techno-thrill ride through a haunted house...
...course, these problems are merely symptomatic of the larger problem of these technothriller novels: self-absorption on behalf of the author. We can imagine the writer, typing away at his word processor (another spur to novel-writing these days: anyone with WordPerfect and memories of comic book adventures can churn out a 400-pager in a few days and modem it away) loath to omit any bit of abstruse technological research accrued over many sleepless nights of study. Perhaps the MA's are the breaks he allows himself. Perhaps Death By Fire is another example of how movies have infiltrated...
...real enough. It is well utilized: a big window allows the audience to see passers-by in the background. Kitchen equipment is placed throughout the whitewashed scene. But, perhaps the scenery should not look so real. When the audience is introduced to the cafeteria workers, they are 100% cartoon. Comic in gesture and personality, even the way they walk off stage is Scooby-like. Left with two conflicting ideals, the play fails on both accounts...
...course of the play. The audience knows that Rolf, the blond, is dumb after five minutes of the play, but then must listen to every dumb line she submits. Hahs slips on a couple of her lines, which further prevents finding any reality within her character, while hindering the comic flow...
...real story turns out not be about about some engorged septuagenarian, but about an old man with a great deal of baggage who is trying to die. That he cannot is alternately comic and deeply poignant. He is a man with issues: his family splintered after his hero brother was shot down in World War II, he has run from two marriages, and the specter of sexual dysfunction plagues him. Sabbath is haphazardly confronting his past; he is putting his affairs in order...