Hexed

Arye Gross is better than this. His turn as the young Jewish G.I. in last year's little-seen A Midnight Clear established him as a talented non-bratpacker fully capable of intelligent, well-realized roles. This, however, is not one of them. As 1993's first truly awful film (well, second, if you bother to count Leprechaun, although I believe most prints of that film have been subsequently destroyed at my behest), Hexed comes across worse than a bad TV movie, and as a comedy, well, it's just no laughing matter. Plotwise, it's your standard farcical take on films like Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction. Gross plays Matthew Welsh, a hotel desk clerk with a penchant for tall tales, who runs afoul of Hexina (Claudia “Those Aren't Your Real Lips, Are They?” Christian), a faux French fashion model with a murderous attitude and a bad case of creeping libido. Tired jokes abound in this celluloid mess, including one disastrously unfunny dig at the Rodney King beating. Fifteen years ago I might have found this funny but then, fifteen years ago I was eleven. The film's only saving grace comes in the form of actress Adrienne “What Am I Doing Here?” Shelly, who from this point on should try harder to stick with director Hal Hartley, for whom she has starred in two really great films, namely The Unbelievable Truth and Trust. Shelly plays Gross's co-worker/confident with a witty good humor that seems wholly out of place in this otherwise incompetent waste of my time.