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Since it was written by David E. Kelley, the creator of that Monday night FOX show starring Calista Flockhart; and it stars a couple people (Bridget Fonda and Bill Pullman) he had originally wanted to cast in said show; and it takes law-office sexual politics, moves them out into the woods, and throws in a giant carnivorous reptile instead a giant carnivorous boss or judge, that’s what Lake Placid should have been called. Especially since it doesn’t even take place in Lake Placid. But what do I know.
When something obviously big and hungry bisects one of his men (to the delight/revulsion of kids in the audience, brought by parent/guardians who either don’t do their homework or don’t mind their children seeing R-rated gore), leaving an awfully long, sharp, unidentifiable tooth in a markedly top-heavy corpse, the Fish & Wildlife chief (Pullman) in an otherwise quite little Maine community puts in a call for some expert help (Fonda) from the Museum of Natural History in New York. After losing another ranger, a grizzly bear, and a cow, they finally realize a monstrous crocodile has inexplicably turned up in New England. Word quickly gets out, drawing a “rich kook mythology professor” (Oliver Platt) who studies crocs up close by swimming with them (even that guy on Animal Planet isn’t that stupid). Before the end credits roll, the thing eats a helicopter, Fonda says “Don’t throw heads at me” and “I keep getting hit with heads,” we’re assaulted with too many examples of the “Star Trek” syndrome (the new person in the scene is dead meat), poor old blue-haired Betty White as an unbalanced widow spouts choice bon mots such as “Thank you, Officer F--kmeat,” everybody agrees the croc swam over from Africa, and wonderfully talented Irish actor Brendan Gleeson (The General) looks regretful he ever bothered working on a really good American accent to play the local sheriff.
What could have been a gratuitously fun revisitation to the Big Predator genre instead is a hit-and-miss affair that offers a few laughs, fewer genuine thrills, and too much adolescent schoolyard banter. Directed by Steve Miner, who didn’t do any better with Halloween H20, Lake Placid should have received same treatment crocodilians sometimes get before they’re too big to cause trouble: a flush down the loo. C-
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