Devon Sawa in "Idle Hands."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, we give this film a: Stars: Devon Sawa and Seth Green Director: Rodman Flender Rated: R, with shocking violence, profanity, drug use and sexual situations Length: 92 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Susan Stark
Gannett News Service

(April 30, 1999) -- As low-rent comic horror movies about and for teen-agers go, Idle Hands starts on a relatively inventive note.

If, as the old saw says, idle hands are the devil's playground, why not give Satan a chance with a high-school, militant slacker? The handsome young Canadian actor Devon Sawa, in his first feature lead, plays this ne'er-do-nothing with pleasantly earnest conviction.

The material often goes over the top, but Sawa keeps his feet solidly on terra firma. That shows discipline and sound comic instincts.

Set on Halloween, the movie establishes our soon-to-be-bedeviled hero's lifestyle in swift, familiar strokes.

He's so lazy he doesn't bother to change the T-shirt and shorts he sleeps in when he goes out; he just throws on a jacket and calls it an outfit.

On the other hand, he rarely goes out (to school or anywhere else). Rather, he's content to lie on the couch watching cartoons or pornography, listening to his music on a headset, smoking dope. An easy superiority fix for teen-aged ticket buyers? Let's hope so.

The morning after Halloween, our hero comes up dry and ambles to a house nearby to pick up a fresh supply of weed from his best friend. Said friend is sitting with the third in their tight-knit slacker fraternity, munching cheese balls and talking dirty.

At least these two have listened to the news on television ("I hate that show!" our hero exclaims.) They inform their caller that a murderer is on the loose in their small town.

Soon enough, it becomes clear that the murderer is none other than our hero, who is genuinely appalled when his wayward right hand takes the life of one best friend and then the other. Special effects shots of the hand doing its own thing dominate the second half of the picture; they're not the razzle-dazzle stuff of The Addams Family movie, but they're technically competent and reasonably inventive.

Those murders are a kind of aha! experience for Sawa's slacker; he deduces that the same wayward hand must also be responsible for the death of both his parents, who, he finally notices, are lying dead in the hallway of the family home.

By all rights, Idle Hands should play as a cheerfully, dumb comedy with solid strains of gruesome and gross embellishment. In the wake of the horrendous tragedy in Colorado, though, the movie takes on a seriously disturbing ghoulishness.

The script touches upon the festering vengefulness of high schoolers who feel they have been excluded from the good times. It addresses the subject of cliques in terms too painful at the moment to get the intended dry laugh of recognition. When our hero wants information about Satanism, he turns to a guy who listens to a nihilistic breed of rock music; it doesn't help much that the guy says, "Hey, it's music. Like Mozart. But louder."

And in one extended scene, a pretty, vapid girl from the popular group weeps guilty crocodile tears while bent over a floral tribute to a pair of murdered classmates she once cruelly dissed. This is supposed to be bent humor. In fact, because the world is so much with us, it's excruciatingly unfunny.

Sometimes a movie gains tremendously from its seeming prescience. The China Syndrome comes readily to mind.

By contrast, Idle Hands, a dark but reasonably astute teen comedy, is likely to suffer from an accident of timing. Far more distressing: It may just become a handy target for those who want easy answers to the horror in Colorado.