Human Nature
Lila (Patricia Arquette) suffers from a hormone imbalance that has cursed her with excessive body hair so she decided to live in the wild, at one with nature. She finds success as a nature writer but longs for love and companionship so she returns to civilization and undergoes painful electrolysis to remove her excess hair...
Lila (Patricia Arquette) suffers from a hormone imbalance that has cursed her with excessive body hair so she decided to live in the wild, at one with nature. She finds success as a nature writer but longs for love and companionship so she returns to civilization and undergoes painful electrolysis to remove her excess hair.
She is then introduced to Nathan (Tim Robbins), a shy psychologist currently trying to teach table manners to mice, and they begin a relationship. However due to an upbringing by overly strict parents, Nathan is a man obsessed with manners.
Puff (Rhys Ifans) is a young man raised by his deranged father to believe that he is an ape and so now lives as one, totally cut of from civilization. When he's discovered by Lila and Nathan while on a nature trip, Nathan thinks it would be a wonderful idea to use him as a subject and to teach him manners and decorum.
Things get somewhat more complicated after that…
Review
This is a satirical look at basic human nature, or at least the nature of three very different human beings whose lives become tangled for a time. It's not rip roaringly funny, most of the comedy is understated but there are some very funny moments in there as well. At the beginning of the film, Nathan is dead, Lila is under arrest for his murder and Puff is telling his tale to Congress. Each tells their part in the story, including the reasons for their being the way they are and what happens as their lives become entangled and so on until we're back up to the present.
Nicely written by Charlie Kaufman, who also wrote the excellent Being John Malkovich, and directed by Michel Gondry, who is better known for having directed a few Bjork videos. This is Gondry's first feature film and he does a reasonably good job here too. As for the cast, Arquette, Robbins and Otto are fairly good but the prize goes to Ifans - he captures the role of the untamed wild man Puff perfectly and he's the source of just about all of the funny moments in the film.
This is a fairly low budget affair and some of the visual effects are obvious for it. For example, there are some shots of CG mice that are a bit rough and some of the woodland backgrounds are definately not top quality. The video is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and everything as it should on a modern production of this kind and there are no defects that I could see. Colours are well used and the only difficult scenes are those with Robbins in all white mode, although even they work well enough. Sound is Dolby Digital 5.1 but with the mostly dialogue-based nature of the film the dialogue is crisp and clear with the surround channels not heavily used other than for effects such as traffic and wildlife sounds.
From the trailers, you might get the idea that there is a fair bit of nudity involved. There is but it's all done in the best possible taste and you'll have to keep your eyes peeled to catch any of it. Listening to the commentary revealed that Ifans' privates were digitally edited out of some of the scenes to keep within the bounds of propriety, although he didn't seem to mind if they were or not.
All in all, not a bad comedy. Kaufman's writing and Ifans' excellent performance make this worth watching. In fact you may get more out of it after a second viewing.
Extras
Human Nature Feature - lasting only six minutes, this is more of a featurette than a feature. Tim Robbins, Patricia Arquette, Miranda Otto and Rhys Ifans talk briefly about the movie and their characters.
Teaser Trailers - There are a surprising 10 of these, which you can play one at a time or all at once, lasting seven minutes in all.
Directors Commentary - by Michel Gondry and Rhys Ifans, While the content is reasonable and they do crack a few jokes and reveal some interesting facts about the production, the gaps in the dialogue increase as the movie progresses. Rhys's occasional comments provide a welcome break from listening to Gondry's French accent, which was sometimes difficult to understand.
Overall
Even though the DVD is somewhat light on extra material, this is an amusing and very watchable movie with enough humour in there to please most people except maybe Jackass fans, although even they might get some ideas from the electric shock therapy scenes.
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