Customer Reviews

The Naked Man [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I feel bad that I enjoyed this movie especially as much as I did. Frankly as far as style and technique goes from a production stand point this is a about as bad as it gets. Yet I love it beyond words. As far as I'm concerned J. Todd Anderson is a genius. I was aprehensive about renting it in the first place, I had seen a preview for it on Lock Stock and two Smoking Barrels. It seemed oddly funny and I heard the word Coen which to me defines great comedy but God did I feel weird on the phone asking the clerk if the "Naked Man" was available! I began watching it and laughed occaisonallly and then an oversized red handcapped van came lumbering up a hill, it was here that I comtamplated turning it off. I thought this movie would join the ranks of the countless others who have either made merciless fun or grossly misportrayed the handicapped. For example "Walking on Air" and Fox's "Family Guy" and "Malcolm in the Middle." And granted it did misportray and made it's share of fun of the handicapped villain played brilliantly by Michael Jeeter. With one key difference never before seen, it added it's own demension and made as much fun of the adverage person and their hilarious misconceptions of the disabled. I can dubbly appreciate this aspect of the film because I am both disabled (cerbral palsy) and have a degree of spine curvature which is also made humorous in this exquisite comedy. i wouldn't be a bit suprized if J. Todd Anderson were disabled himself because he shows remarkable insight into the daily trials and annoyances of disabled life and makes them incredibly funny. I will buy this movie as soon as it becomes available for the mass market and I suggest you do too.

Being a great Coen Brothers fan, I expected much of this film directed by the Coen's storyboard artist J. Todd Anderson, and written by Anderson and Ethan Coen. Let me say simply that it is not a great film. In fact, as a film, it is not even very good. Then why the four stars? I rate it highly because it has spectacular imagery, a sometimes hilarious script, and the filmakers did not set out to make a great film. They did exactly what they wanted to do. They created a often hilarious and always entertaining story of a chiropractor by day, wrestler by night who avenges the deaths of his parents by curing spinal disalignment everywhere. Cheers to Mr. Rapaport and Michael Jeter for going all out. Anderson shows some promise with a style much like John Waters. Elvis and the "All Wrestlers Call" are two highlights. Please enjoy and rent all Coen films if you have not previously seen them.

Although it's wacky, this is the best chiropractic movie ever made. It may be a turnoff for some audiences (especially chiropractors with no sense of humor) since our star, Michael Rappaport, gets a bit wild in the film.

It's funny stuff that's full of inside chiropractic jokes, hints of chiropractic philosophy, and mentions of maintaining spinal integrity for better living (although the methods in the film are rather radical).

This has become a collector's item, and may be tough to get a hold of. Recommended viewing for all doctors of chiropractic as it will tickle your funny bone and have you rooting for truth, justice, and the chiropractic way.

This film was recommended to me by a friend who's opinion I value and therefore I watched the film with him. This film is interesting if you look into it, but a lot of people probably aren't digging into the psychological aspects of this movie. I found the scenes with the disabled to be particularly funny because they were handled a lot differently than most films that portray the handicapped. A lot of people have misconceptions about handicapped people and most movies just feed that ignorance to the point where the ignorance becomes mainstream thought - in the same manner that our minds were tainted against African Americans, the Japanese (during WWII), or Latin Americans today. But this film goes against the grain of pop culture and makes fun of our misconceptions and prejudices. It exposes our ludicrous thinking that we can understand the disabled just by watching movies about their situations. Well . . . perhaps we can by watching more movies made in this style.

On top of that, it is a very interesting movie to watch and hilariously (and sometimes quite badly - to the point of almost laughing at itself) using the Naked Man as a symbol for modern prejudice. It's overdone, but I believe that was their intention - so it can be pulled off.

All in all - the ultimate mark of a movie is whether you would watch it again or not. I would have to say I would, if only to bring myself possibly a little closer to understanding my own faults and exposing my own prejudices - wherever they may lie.

I ordered the movie which I wanted in DVD but I could only find it in VHS. I watched it and the only thing I did not like about it was the Spanish sub titles. I feel that Amazon should have indicated that the VHS had Spanish sub titles on the order form.

You better learn to have more respect for the mortar and pestle! Mortar and Pestle! Mortar and Pestle!

As a chiropractor, I can tell that somebody was on the inside of this profession pulling together many idiosyncrasies that are unique to chiropractic. It's pretty common stereotype that when chiropractors are doing an internship at another doctors office, the new doc gets abused, and will start to hand out his cards to the old doc's patients right before he moves down the street to open his own practice. They hit the nail on the head there. It's funny when the naked man tells his pharmacist dad that half of his drugs are placebo and the other half are borderline narcotics!

Also funny is the opening sequence where he is performing a miracle cure. The patient is getting unbuckled from various harnesses. He straightens her lumbar and thoracic spine out, then cut to the scene where you are looking at the ceiling through the patient's blurry eyes. You see the blurry ceiling move from side to side, then *crack*. The ceiling appears a little more clear. It moves again from side to side. *crack*. The patient's vision is restored! Classic chiropractic.

Funny.

The Naked Man definitely has a Coen-esque flavor, but it's more darkly humorous than, say, Raising Arizona. It starts off slow but about an hour into the movie when "The Naked Man" has gone nuts, you may begin to wonder if Terry Gilliam just took over the directing chores or if this is some bizarre dark side track in The World According to Garp.

Highly recommended if you like your comedy weird and with a body count. But on the other hand if you're expecting "The Wedding Singer" you'll be left scratching your head.

I watched this because I like Rapaport, but he can't save this jumbled mess of a film. A movie this ridiculous should make the most of its ridiculousness, but the laughs here are few and far between; a few clever morsels tossed into a stew of pointlessness.