Crazy In Alabama

Following the incomprehensible success of Double Jeopardy, here's another inept movie about a homicidal wife made by a non-American director. Adapted from the breezy, '60s-set Mark Childress bestseller by Spanish actor Antonio Banderas in his feature debut, Crazy In Alabama features Banderas's wife, Melanie Griffith, as Lucille, an Alabama mother of seven who snaps one day when her abusive husband mocks her dream of heading to Hollywood to star on Bewitched. She offs him with d-Con, cuts off his head and puts it in Tupperware, drops off the kids at her mom's, and hightails it westward, but not before establishing a bond with her orphaned nephew Peejoe (Lucas Black, the best thing in the movie despite the relentless voiceover narration). Peejoe's got his own education in oppression to undergo, as the town of Industry where he is staying with his undertaker uncle Dove (a nondescript David Morse) is being racked by the civil-rights movement. Laboriously intercutting the two tales to make its clumsy points about freedom, guilt, and celebrity, Crazy doesn't go really crazy until near the end, when Rod Steiger takes over as a judge and demonstrates what an overbaked Southern ham is like. At the Holiday and Showcase cinemas.
-- Peter Keough