Our Flick of the Week is ”Final Analysis,” a rare example of a pedestrian thriller that gets interesting very late in the game.
Unfortunately, it`s also a picture that couldn`t get worse.
Richard Gere looks very silly as a San Francisco psychiatrist who becomes involved in the case of two beautiful, troubled sisters (Uma Thurman and Kim Basinger). Thurman plays his neurotic patient; Basinger is the older sister who comes to Gere`s office apparently to help in a sexy variation on ”The Prince of Tides” storyline.
With the casting of Basinger and Gere, one assumes that ”Final Analysis” would offer a shrink-wrapped version of ”9 1/2 Weeks.” To its credit, the script of ”Final Analysis” ultimately exploits our lust, but that occurs only well after we`ve been laughing at the movie.
Could the problem be that Gere is simply too outrageously good-looking to be a psychiatrist? Would eyeglasses help? Is Basinger`s sex kitten act wearing thin? And when we see them together in his office, is there any other response than to wonder when they`re going to get it on?
”Final Analysis” does go beyond the expected in homage to its San Francisco-based, ”Vertigo”-inspired setting. But it fails to do so in any organic way. It`s almost as if the movie were split into two parts: silly characters and tricky plot.
”Final Analysis” is playing at the Burnham Plaza, McClurg Court, Webster Place and outlying theaters. Rated R. (STAR)(STAR)
Flicks Picks guide
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New this week
– FINAL ANALYSIS (Burnham Plaza, McClurg Court, Webster Place and outlying). This Week`s Flick of the Week. See above. (STAR)(STAR).
– KAFKA (Fine Arts). Steven Soderbergh`s second film, following his
”sex, lies, and videotape,” is a more academic exercise but possibly just as personal. Unfortunately he patterned his story after the Czech writer without making a straight biography. Thus critics have been slamming Soderbergh as a dilettante. But this smoky tale of a paranoid clerk (Jeremy Irons) in 1919 Prague, shot in black and white, can be viewed as similar to the Coen brothers` ”Barton Fink” in its self-critical portrait of an artist blaming others for his inadequacies. PG-13. (STAR)(STAR)(STAR)
