# Drowning Mona (2000)

### reviewed by
Scott Renshaw

DROWNING MONA (Dimension) Starring: Danny DeVito, Bette Midler, Neve Campbell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Casey Affleck, William Fichtner, Marcus Thomas. Screenplay: Peter Steinfeld. Producers: Al Corley, Bart Rosenblatt and Eugene Musso. Director: Nick Gomez. MPAA Rating: PG-13 (profanity, adult themes, violence) Running Time: 95 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.

At one point in DROWNING MONA -- one of the strangest, most frustrating films I've ever been able to sort of recommend as a critic -- small-town cop Wyatt Rash (Danny DeVito) conducts an interview after the suspicious death of town witch Mona Dearly (Bette Midler). The interviewee is Mona's dimwitted son Jeff (Marcus Thomas), who is trying to implicate his landscaping business partner Bobby Calzone (Casey Affleck) by recounting a confrontation in which he recalls that Bobby shouted a threat to Mona: "I'll tear out your ovaries!" An incredulous Chief Rash asks Jeff, "He said 'ovaries?'" "Oh yeah," responds Jeff, "all the time."

That can't possibly read as funny as it plays, but it's typical of the throwaway gags that kept me chuckling constantly through an utterly pointless plot. The premise is that virtually everyone in town -- Jeff, Bobby, Mona's husband Phil (William Fichtner), Phil's waitress lover Rona (Jamie Lee Curtis), Bobby's fiancee and Chief Rash's daughter Ellie (Nee Campbell), even Chief Rash's deputy Feege (Peter Dobson) -- had a motive for slaying the much-hated Mona. Through flashbacks we see a variety of antagonizing incidents, many of which may have happened in a completely different way. The goal would seem to be a broad, dark comedy combining DeVito's twisted sensibilities, Midler at her most obnoxious and a well-known everybodydunnit: THROW THE RUTHLESS PEOPLE FROM THE ORIENT EXPRESS.

Only the broad, dark comedy is far and away the least interesting thing about DROWNING MONA. At its best, it's a showcase for the sort of giddy, utterly unexpected moments (by screenwriter Peter Steinfeld) that can make a devotee of great film writing swoon. Due to a test marketing by the car manufacturer, everyone in the town drives a Yugo (and the service station helpfully announces "We specialize in Yugos"). A suicidal man's demand to Chief Rash, "Don't come any closer, Sheriff" is greeted by another officer's insistent plea, "Wait wait wait ... he's not a sheriff!" A funeral parlor's neon sign announces "As seen on TV." And so on.

Actually, and so on and on and on. Steinfeld is clearly a clever fellow, but he also doesn't quite know when to quit, or how to keep the tone jaunty. There are trite scenes involving an alcoholic Catholic priest, shoulda-been-but-not-quite gags involving a man's use of the "Wheel of Fortune" board game as foreplay and a misguided scene apparently intended to make Mona a sympathetic loser (instead of the cackling cartoon better suited to the story). By the time the final half hour rolls to a close -- including a forced bit with a lesbian kiss and Tracey Walter becoming the film's town loony ex machina -- DROWNING MONA has lost a lot of the bounce in its step, tossing out much of the subversive humor for chases and exposition (and far too much screen time for Neve Campbell).

Still, there are those great bits of business that make too much of DROWNING MONA too much oddball fun to dismiss completely. Plenty of those bits of business would have worked just as well in any other story, which makes it a shame that it had to be a wacky farce. Crank DROWNING MONA down a notch or five, yank some of the bigger stars out of the film and make it a sly low-budget film (which has been director Nick Gomez's milieu), and you might have really had something. You have something anyway, something as smart and weird as it is big and dumb. Maybe it's only a certain kind of viewer who will enjoy sitting through the big, dumb stuff to get to big, dumb Jeff sarcastically tapping his thumb and forefinger together, taunting Bobby by playing "the world's smallest tambourine."

         On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 Yugo bosses:  6.

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