Naked Lunch

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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Year:	1991
Country of origin:	Canada / UK / Japan
Director:	David Cronenberg
Genre:	Psychadelic bug horror
Starring:	Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Julian Sands, Ian Holm, Roy Scheider
Rating:	3/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102511/
Tagline:	David Cronenberg and William S. Burroughs invite you to lunch.
Favourite line:	"It's a Kafka high. You feel like a bug."

Filming the unfilmable is, of course, David Cronenberg's Raison d'etre and he takes it to new levels here with a confusing mish-mash of a movie, interpretting a book that, allegedly, makes no sense to begin with.

Peter 'Robocop' Weller plays Bill Lee, one time writer who has now taken up insect extermination as a way to make ends meet. To kill the little blighters, he makes use of a yellow powder that, unfortunately, his wife has become addicted to, taking it intravenously.
She persuades him to indulge, and that's when his life goes into meltdown.
After accidentally killing his wife in a reenactment of William Tell's famous trick with the apple, he is forced to flee to Interzone, a shadowy, little known state in Africa where writers abound. Commencing work on some form of report, it isn't long before the typewriter has transformed into a giant bug and is doing all the work for him.
And from then on it's just plain odd.

Mind-meltingly confusing, at first it is intriguing, but I soon found myself tiring of it. It's difficult to hold the concentration on something that makes no bloody sense at all for two whole hours without feeling a little frustrated. And there's the rub - whilst visually interesting throughout, because the plot makes no sense it soon becomes boring, not something normally associated with Cronenberg's outpourings, however off the wall they may be.
The cast is fine, and the effects suitably drug-laced but, ultimately it all felt like a bit of a waste of time.
Disappointed.