Take Ally McBealish cute-but-not-funny quirky dialogue and add
one thirty-foot long Asian crocodile; sprinkle liberally with
Betty White saying "cocksucker" and "fuckmeat."
Hey, I like horror movies. They're stupid and formulaic. Lake
Placid is just as stupid and formulaic as any other. It's okay.
Who's who? Some fat dude I never saw before plays Sherrif
Keogh, who's "tough but fair" and doesn't like smart-mouths
from NYC or the Fish & Game department. I liked this guy.
Bill Pullman plays a Fish and Game officer sent to hunt down
the croc. I always like Bill.
Oliver Platt plays a millionaire Mythology Professor who, like
various Asian/Indian/Archipelagan societies, thinks that
crocodiles are Holy Dragons and likes swimming with them. He's
not as good as usual-- his character is a bit too cutely
eccentric to be credible-- but he has some nice conflict with the
fat sherrif. The fat Oliver Platt tells the fat sherrif,
helpfully, "Sometimes it doesn't register when friends and
family tell you something. So I'm gonna tell you as an outside
observer: You're fat." Kind of funny.
Bridget Fonda plays Ally McBeal, who now works as a no-fieldwork
paleontologist at a NYC museum sent to Maine to study the croc.
Of course, she's a fish out of water. She has a "thing"
about mosquitoes and ticks and says she's "allergic to
timber." Funny? Not really. Cute but not funny.
Lake Placid doesn't really have anything new in it. You've
seen everything here somewhere else dozens of times.
Is the croc scary? No. The film is simply too spritely to be
taken seriously as a horror movie. However, the CGI effects are
kept to a minimum, and only used in medium-distance shots, so
they don't look that bad.
An okay diversion. Good enough to rent. Two stars out of five.
