The Darwin Awards (2006)

I was extremely disappointed by The Darwin Awards.

With a stellar A list cast and great ideas behind it I had expected The Darwin Awards to be a romping comedy but every scene left me feeling more confused. Nothing meshes together and all the stories are disjointed and have little heart thrown behind them. The actors go through their lines with very little conviction. The whole production has a cheap made in my basement feel about it as if Finn Taylor had hired a bunch of school boys to do the editing and special effects.

The Darwin Awards books and website has a very large collection of stories. Finn has chosen to show a few of them but hasn't woven a good story around the accidents that take place. Fiennes and Ryder play a pair of detectives investigating the accidents and a serial criminal. This is an excuse to sell a romantic comedy angle that doesn't work because there is no chemistry between the leads. Fiennes has never been a good comedian and Ryder, well she has good timing but is too quirky and irksome to play a full blown woman's role yet. She still hasn't shed her childlike impish nature. The cameo actors perform much better than the leads. I can't help imagine how much better this movie would have been with a better production team and if the casting was shuffled around and David Arquette played lead.

The Darwin Awards might also offend audiences who will ask themselves why should they laugh at someone's death. We just about all have lost family members through accidents and never laughed about it so why should we laugh at the deaths of unrelated people? If some people like to get off on that fine but I can't see the majority laughing. I am not surprised that the vote for this movie is being manipulated. It is so bad only desperate measures can save it. If it wasn't for these fake votes (average score of 9.4 from 10 IMDb readers outside the US before Sundance and where it hasn't been released?) I would have given it a higher rating. Even worse than this movie is the number of Winona Ryder fans who have tried to get rid of this review for one line of criticism. The rest of the review reflects the same opinions as the other reviews. Freedom of speech, honest opinions and quality motion pictures appear to be lower on their list of concerns than shoplifting.

Fmovies: Here is one movie which begins well enough and the social premise is that accidents are everywhere. The film is called " The Darwin Awards. " The theory of social stupidity and why so many people commit suicide through thoughtless accidents is redundantly explained. However, there are just as many people who don't wait for the accident to happen, they insist on accomplishing their task despite the obvious dangers and possible consequences. Michael Burrows ( Joseph Fiennes) plays a washed out policeman who cannot stand the sight of blood. Seeking employment, he is teamed up with Siri Taylor (Winona Ryder) to investigate a rash of accidents which have million dollars insurance policies. In their travels, they discover how a simple plan, can unleash a series of mishaps and behavioral actions which cause great bodily injury. With special guest in cameo roles like Wilmer Valderrama, Lukas Haas, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, director Finn Taylor creates a comedic wild ride for audiences. A laughable film which contain much slapstick, but somehow does not quite hold the story together. Nevertheless, a fun film to watch. ***

This was the coveted ticket at Sundance, apparently. We arrived 2 1/2 hours before the screening and were shocked to find that we were nearly 90th in line! We luckily got into our screening,but unfortunately, the movie was a disappointment. The cast is stellar; Joe Fiennes and Winona Ryder are the headliners, and there are many cameos, including Tim Blake Nelson and Robin Tunney, who starred in director Finn Taylor's last movie, Cherish. In addition, Chris Penn (who unfortunately passed away just the day before the premiere of this film at Sundance), Wilmer Valderrama, Alessandro Nivola, Ty Burrell, Juliette Lewis, Tom Hollander, and David Arquette were some of the other cameos included.

Joe Fiennes plays a police detective who is thrown off the squad due to his propensity to faint at the sight of blood. He and Ryder's character get together and try to find out what makes these "Darwin Award" winners tick. I am not sure that point is ever resolved in this film, which is part of the reason why it is uneven. Also, there is just no chemistry between Ryder and Fiennes. I really didn't care whether or not the two of them "got together" or not.

There are a few laughs in the film as the Award "winners" demonstrate what they did to "win." The problem is that they just didn't effectively sum up the movie. It was a little confusing. I will probably rent the DVD when it comes out so that I can see if I just missed it. Another problem is the documentary "filmmaker" who tags along. Why? He seems pointless.

All in all, we had a great time at the screening; Fiennes, Valderrama, Burrell, and Brad Hunt, as well as Finn Taylor, and the author of the book (The Darwin Awards) led the Q and A session afterward. That was the best part of the screening! My recommendation is that if you want to see a good Finn Taylor film, rent "Cherish".

The Darwin Awards fmovies. The fun part was saying, "Oh, that's so-and-so" during the movie. And any movie that casts the Mythbusters as arms dealers is OK by me. I thought Ryder and Fiennes were good--but I would watch Joseph Fiennes read the Yellow Pages, so I may not be a good source. Excellent use of Ferlinghetti and Metallica as well. The murder mystery plot line was a little weak; I would have liked to see more examples of Darwin-ish behavior. All in all, it was a good way to spend 1:34 of my time, and I recommend it to anyone to watch instantly. I don't know if I would wait for it to come in the mail but as an impulse, it was good. Netflix should add more like this.

This was a movie I was really looking forward to at Sundance. We're all familiar with the Darwin Awards, a website started by Stanford molecular biologist Wendy Northcutt to humorously recognize extremely stupid acts that lead to self-inflicted, accidental death. Northcutt's notion is that the human gene pool improves when these tragi-comic figures, who are presumably plagued by genetic stupidity, are removed from the population. Hence the Darwin Awards (www.darwinawards.com).

It sounds like a terrific premise for an outrageous comedy and like the rest of the audience I was licking my chops. Unfortunately, this movie was about as funny as Origin of the Species. Director Finn Taylor has made a couple of refreshingly oddball films (Dreams with the Fishes, Cherish) but The Darwin Awards fails on almost every level.

The concept was probably doomed from the outset by the decision to incorporate a bunch of award-winning events into a linear storyline, including madcap crime investigations and a little love interest. Casting Joseph Fiennes and Wynona Ryder as the leads was the second mistake, as neither of them was right for their parts (and despite their efforts, came off very flat). Follow that with writing that is simply not very clever and you have a disappointing movie.

The vignettes do include some great casting choices, including Chris Penn, Tim Blake Nelson, David Arquette and Metallica. But unfortunately, they are lost in the woeful script, and give us only the occasional funny moment.

As many have heard, actor Chris Penn was found dead at his Santa Monica home the day of the Sundance premiere. Finn Taylor had some nice words to say about Chris prior to the screening. And afterwards Winona Ryder, who had known Chris for 15 years, spoke at length about him. "He wasn't just Sean's younger brother," she said. It was a genuinely nice tribute.

Despite the terrible reviews this movie has garnered, it has some qualities that raise it above average and gives us something that, over all, is pretty darn good. In addition to explaining some of the more foolish acts performed by people in an entertaining way, the work attempts to give us an understanding as to why these people commit those foolish acts.

There is, in the eyes of this work, a duality of man that shifts between normal, safe and acceptable behavior and insane actions that may often lead to one's death. Throughout the movie, David Arquette's character is straining to discover what it is, exactly, that drives an otherwise normal human being to acts of profound stupidity and danger. The character's goal shifts from an attempt to discover a common profile for these people into something more personal and real.

However, the movie ultimately fails on this premise. While it does raise the question, it never bothers to give us an acceptable answer. The best it has to offer comes from Ryder's character regarding 'a maze of automatic telephone voicemails' when dealing with insurance companies. Arquette's character can't seem to come close.

Overall, the look and feel of the movie is fresh and original. While it borrows from a number of different styles that will immediately be recognized, but it brings them together in a wonderful way. In addition, the soundtrack to the movie is superb.