Joseph Howell
“It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time” is a series that focuses on movies which have a bad critical reputation, bombed in the box office, or serve as guilty pleasures. It will largely focus on genre movies, though I will venture outside of that area
Hollywood has always had a thing for a “naughty” actress. Be it Angelina Jolie, Marylin Monroe, or Natasha Henstridge, if someone isn’t afraid to have simulated sex or drop their top on a regular basis, you are either that or a horror movie scream queen.
In the 90’s, two actresses in particular were Demi Moore and Sharon Stone. Stone starred in the Paul Verhoeven directed, Joe Eszterhas written hit “Basic Instinct,” in which she played a Bisexual sexpot with a penchant for ice picks. Within a short amount of time, Stone went from another somewhat struggling actress to an A-List actor/sex symbol. For her and Estzerhas to team up again seemed to be a great idea. Their follow up, “Sliver” (a loose adaptation of a book by “Stepford Wives” and “Rosemary’s Baby” novelist Ira Levin) proved to be less than the sum of its parts.
Amazingly, I remember “Sliver” back when it came out. Back then, me and other third and fourth graders knew who Sharon Stone was, and the fact that she was naked in several of her movies proved to be a fascinating little prospect for boys who were just starting to show interest in things like female breasts. She was like a taboo thing, and the fact that you couldn’t see it yet due to age made it all the more tantalizing.
I hadn’t even seen “Sliver” until I turned 20. By then, puberty had ended and interest in movies like “Showgirls” was a thing in the past. Finally watching it was more ‘Oh yeah, that movie!’ than ‘I can’t wait to see Sharon Stone’s tits!’ By then, the internet had helped out in that category years before. The prospect of seeing the actress naked wasn’t so interesting anymore.
Revisiting it recently, I remember what I thought when I finally saw the thing: that it was little more than another one of many dull erotic thrillers that came out in the wake of “Basic Instinct.” Crap like “Body of Evidence” and “Disclosure.” What seemed like forbidden fruit as a 10 year old was actually pretty lame.
Stone stars as Carly Norris, a book editor who has moved into Sliver apartments. It’s in this building that she meets two new neighbors in thriller novelist Jack Landsford (Tom Berenger) and Zeke Hawkins (William Baldwin), owner of the building. In the process, she finds herself in the midst of a love affair with Zeke, though she doesn’t realize that he has wired the building with hidden cameras so he can monitor what everyone does. There’s a killer on the loose that’s targeting women living in the apartment building and Carly begins to suspect that either Jack or Zeke are the culprits. Is she next in the killer’s cross hairs?
As a movie, “Sliver” undeniably falls flat. The acting isn’t bad perse, but nobody in the film is all that well written. Carly is essentially a flat cipher of a character, and her affair with Zeke isn’t all that erotic (the movie also likes to show you William Baldwin’s sweaty naked ass quite a bit.) If anything, the people in this movie aren’t really human beings as much as they are a series of poorly thought out plot developments that don’t really go anywhere (the affair Carly is involved in is supposed to feel dangerous, but it just feels like something out of a dull episode of “The Red Shoe Diaries”) and you eventually lose any investment the movie wants you to have with these characters.
Another reason it falls flat is through a thematic level. It’s obvious that director Philip Noyce (whose credits include: “Dead Calm,” “Rabbit Proof Fence,” and “The Quiet American”) is interested in the theme of voyerism, as is writer Eszterhas. However, I also got the feeling that Noyce also wants the hidden camera aspect to represent something more, like technology creating a distance from other people. This is a Joe Eszterhas script, so you aren’t going to get anything like that. Instead, you are just going to get trashy-but-unconvincing pulp ground into a pedestrian story that doesn’t go anywhere interesting. Instead of something worth watching, it’s nothing more than a bad attempt at trying to cash in on Sharon Stone’s reputation.
If there’s anything nice I can say about the movie, it’s that the soundtrack is at least fun sometimes. The most well known songs of course, are UB40’s cover of the Elvis Presley song “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You” and Shaggy’s cover of the Folkes Brothers song “Oh, Carolina.” However, you also get everything from Techno (Massive Attack and Fluke), New Wave (Heaven 17), Indie Rock (The Verve), and Industrial (The Young Gods and Bigod 20). The only downside is Enigma aka “Let’s mix World Music, New Age, and Gregorian Chant with nonthreatening dance beats!” It’s a mostly fun, albeit pretty dated soundtrack.
Unfortunately, a soundtrack isn’t a reason to watch a movie, and “Sliver” is no exception. Nowadays, the movie is only interesting due to the fact that it marks the beginning of the end for Joe Eszterhas. Prior to this movie, it seemed like he was a go to guy for erotic thrillers. With “Sliver” (and later “Showgirls” and “Jade”), his career took a huge nosedive. In the end, I guess you could say the moral of the story is: Just because Sharon Stone is naked pretending to fuck a guy doesn’t mean you wrote a good movie. Or something like that.
Budget: $40,000,000
Box Office Total: $116,300,000 worldwide ($36,300,000 in the U.S.)
Next Time: The dumb, goofy charm of “Dracula 2000.”
