The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion
(2002)
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CW Briggs is a veteran insurance investigator, with many successes. Betty Ann Fitzgerald is a new employee in the company he works for, with the task of reorganizing the office. They don't like each other - or at least that's what they think. During a night out with the rest of the office employees, they go to watch Voltan, a magician who secretly hypnotizes both of them, in order to use them for his dirty schemes. The next evening already, Briggs makes his first robbery, and when he wakes up in the morning he has no memory of it. Things get really complicated when he starts investigating the case. Will he be able to uncover... himself? |
Woody Allen is in nostalgic mood for this handsome tribute to the 1940s crime B-movie. But he not only misses the timbre of hard-boiled argot, but also allows his pastiche plot to meander in a manner unthinkable in the bad old days of the 60-minute programme-filler. Yet, what really prevents a potentially diverting project from taking off is the love-hate mismatch between Allen's hapless insurance investigator and Helen Hunt's efficiency expert, who have been hypnotised into doing the bidding of nefarious showman David Ogden Stiers. Dan Aykroyd and Charlize Theron gamely boost underwritten supporting roles, but nothing disguises the lethal lack of inspiration.