DVD Review: The Darwin Awards

The Darwin Awards first appeared nearly three decades ago, or somewhere thereabouts I don't know the exact year. Their purpose was to recognoze those souls with such a rare, or not so rare, intelligence that fate saw it fit for them to be removed from the gene pool. The result is a cleaner, friendlier gene pool in which to swim. Basically, there are the stories of people who were killed (or at least seriously hurt) in the most bizarre and creative ways. Check out DarwinAwards.com to see some of these wild stories for yourself. What we are faced with here is a film that attempts to bring some of those outlandish stories to the movie realm, woven together in episodic format while a common thread holds them together. In the end, it is moderately effective, though not terribly good.

The connective tissue of the Darwin episodes centers on Michael Burrows (Joseph Fiennes). The character begins the film as a police personality profiler on the case of a serial killer. The problem is that, while he is very good at what he does, he has a condition that cuases him to faint at the sight of blood, a fact that comes into play when he is on ther verge of catching the killer. His condition allows the guy to get away, resulting in Burrows losing his job. The loss of his police position leads to his true passion, the investigation of these Darwin cases.

So, off he goes to a large insurance company with a proposal that could save them millions, study the factors contributing to these inventive ways of dying, create an insurance profile, and then profile against that. With a limited time to prove his case, he is paired with an insurance adjustor, Siri (Winona Ryder), and together they head out to investigate the odd and unusual claims.

Well, that is pretty much all there is to the story used to hold everything together. It is not much, but it is there. The centerpiece of The Darwin Awards are the numerous episodes of the Darwin incidents, some of which you are probably familiar with from the annual email chain announcing the winners.

Still, while the appeal are the Darwin sequences, what really held my attention was Joseph Fiennes performance. He is clever creation that seems to be heavily influenced by Tony Shalhoub's Monk (he may not be, but the similarities are there). There is a good amount of narration that evokes a noirish feel, combined with the by the book nature of Burrows. In a movie that is decidedly light entertainment, Burrows is a much more complex character than you would expect to find in this type of film. However, the movie is crippled by a mixture of traditional shot scenes, and the device of having Burrows followed by a student documentary filmmaker. I am not sure why that decision was made, sure it made for a couple of humorous moments, but it jsut felt inconsistent with the noir narration. The two devices clashed and did not help the film in the least.

The casting of Fiennes and Ryder does not work all that well. The chemistry between them is minimal at best, and Ryder might as well be phoning it in. Sure, she looks lovely and has a certain charisma, but there was somethign about her that was unconvincing. Beyond the two leads, there are a good number of recognizable faces throughout the vignettes. The faces include David Arquette, Juliette Lewis, Judah Friedlander, Lukas Haas, Julianna Margulies, Tim Blake Nelson, Chris Penn, DB Sweeney, Robin Tunney, and Wilmer Valderrama.

It is fun, it is entertaining, but it is insubstantial. I actually found it funnier to read the true stories than to see them played out. Still, I did laugh at the recreated antics. This is really a lesser movie that is worthy of a rental at most.

Audio/Video. The copy I have is a promo copy, not one completely representative of the final production version. It did look and sound decent, nothing to complain about, but I would not swear that what you see will be exactly the same.

Extras. The few extras included are pretty much worthless. There is a brief 6 minute fluffy making of featurette, and a few brief (in some cases very brief) interview clips with the actors that don't really offer much. A commentary would have been nice.

Bottomline. This was fun, not really all that substantial. If you are looking for something to have a little fun with, you could do much worse. There are laughs to be had, and the Burrows character proves to be much more interesting than he has any right to be. So, don't make any bad decisions on your way to checking it out.

Mildly Recommended.