Despite several what-must-have-been-at-the-time-neat editing tricks and sequences, inserted because the director was actually an editor and should have stuck to that, we have a film with the wrong person's personality stamped all over it. All you have to do is sit through five minutes of "The Magic Christian," if you can, and you'll see how Terry Southern applied his panacea of "Just add stupid" to Barth's beyond brilliant novel. I am only 30 minutes into the film and I don't think I can take anymore. The pathetic need to shock, impress and generally make people think he's so smart is evident if one picks up the book and reads along, seeing where Southern has stuck in obvious imagery, where he's put naked people, which masculine female nurse has been turned into a cross dressing psychotic gun wielding patient/nurse, where he's put people having sex with chickens and where he's put the American flag (a lot of places). It's even more embarrassing because he's raping the work of a fellow novelist, probably out of jealousy. Southern's idea of brilliance is to take a part that was serious in the book, James Earl Jones' Doctor, and have him dance around singing "Caledonia, Catatonia." In other words: moronic nonsense. The more the better. The scene where Southern has added masturbation to Jacob and Rennie's first telephone conversation is reminiscent of Gus Van Sant restoring it to Norman Bates in that celebrated "Psycho" remake. The scenes in the hospital are among the worst in cinema history and take up so much of the running time of the movie that Joe's character is cut out nearly entirely and what actually happens as a result of these brief encounters with lovers of chickens gets short shrift. Aside from this it is annoying to see that one of Harris Yulin's only what-could-have-been-supporting-lead-instead-of-character roles has been pared down, and that he's so miscast. Keach is somewhat miscast as well, he might have been better suited to playing Yulin's part the way it is written in the book, and he looks like a prototype for "Jedi" Mark Hamill with the scar. Strangely enough, this was Yulin's first movie and he did several more with Keach. The girl playing Rennie is actually somewhat appealing, but we never see much of her, she apparently writes schlock now so I guess this was good practice. James Earl Jones seems to be here because of this Southern connection (Strangelove), Southern has written most of his (terrible) dialogue and Jones really should have cleaned his toenails instead. But never mind that, never mind what is written in the book because Terry Southern is a writer too and he knows best. Now I have
to decide if I'm up to seeing how they lay waste to the rest of it. I did stick it out and thank the lord, the scenes outside the clinic are less stupendously mind-blowingly awful. The critic and erstwhile jerk John Simon said "the novel concludes with a harrowing abortion, whereas the film is an abortion from start to finish." Not quite as bad as Jan De Bont's "The Haunting" as lit adaptations go, but close. GO READ THE BOOK!
