Mimic

Mimic (1997)

Directed by: Guillermo del Toro
Written by: Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins, based on a short story by Donald A. Wollheim
Starring: Mira Sorvino, Jeremy Northam, Alexander Goodwin, Giancarlo Giannini, Charles S. Dutton, Alix Koromzay, F. Murray Abraham, Josh Brolin, Norman Reedus

Another step in the magical journey which leads inevitably to me digging Guillermo. I didn't want to like him particularly (God knows why - something to do with Hellboy) but I find myself unable to resist.

Anyway, this is his big bug movie (kind of a combination of those bug movies from the '50s, Aliens and Frankenstein - what could possibly go wrong?), about a scientist who creates an insect by combining the DNA of a termite and a praying mantis. It's purpose is to kill the disease carrying cockroaches of New York and then quietly die off as it only live 120 days and all of the females are sterile. However, much like in Jurassic Park, something goes wrong and instead of dying out, the insects mutate into huge monsters living in the abandoned parts of the subway system.

Nifty stuff. It was interesting, now that I've seen enough of Guillermo's movies, noticing the themes he seems to go back to a lot. For example, he seems to really like weird, clicking bugs.

And of course, there's the look of his movies. Very dark - like Terry Gilliam.

Anyway, I dug this movie. It was pretty good. The bugs were spiffy, I must say, and actually they didn't look too bad for '97. And bugs are just kind of cool. Being an etymologist (or whatever those bug people are called) would be kind of neat. I wouldn't do it of course, but the chick in this movie was pretty groovy.

She didn't look too much like a bug lady, of course. Too pretty (in that special Hollywood actress way. I have no doubt that there are some very lovely bug people, but they probably don't care about their hair as much). I find it rather disturbing that Mira Sorvino dated Quentin Tarantino, but that's irrelevant.

And this movie had FMurray in it. Yay.

So obviously I liked this movie - okay, it was moronic (I mean, if you call something a Judas Beetle, what do you think it's going to do? Help you out?), but it was good moronic. Entertaining moronic. And it has that nice, environmentalist message mixed in there somewhere. I don't see what Guillermo has against it. Something to do with the producers, probably. Fuckin producers.

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