Thinner

Thinner (1996)

Directed by: Tom Holland
Written by: Michael McDowell and Tom Holland, based on the novel by Stephen King
Starring: Robert John Burke, Joe Mantegna, Lucinda Jenney, Michael Constantine, Kari Wuhrer, Joie Lenz, Jeff Ware, John Horton, Daniel von Bargen, Elizabeth Franz, Irma St. Paule, Stephen King

Another adaptation of a Stephen King novel, this one released theatrically, and marginally better than The Tommyknockers, but still not particularly inspiring.

This is the one about the fat guy who accidentally runs over a little old gypsy lady while getting a blow job from his wife and is cursed by the lady's father, who happens to be King of the Gypsies. The curse is that the guy becomes thinner, losing weight no matter how much he eats.

And then he tries to get the curse off of himself for the rest of the movie, with a little help from Fat Tony.

The most irksome thing about this movie is that the fat effects aren't very good. I live in Dartmouth so I see a lot of fat people, and I know very well what they look like. The guy in this movie was very obviously a regular guy dressed up to look like a fat guy - he didn't walk right. He also didn't have manboobs, which fat men tend to have.

Actually, that wasn't the most irksome thing. Even more irksome was the racism towards gypsies. I mean, a gypsy curse? Grow up. It's almost as bad as there being an Indian Curse on something. Okay, had this movie been made sixty years ago, I probably would have let them alone, but this was the 90s. The least they could do would be to make them realistic.

Anyway, enough about my weird gypsy thing (give me your tears, gypsy). I didn't really believe a lot about this movie. I haven't read the book (surprise surprise), but I hear it's pretty good. I dunno.

Yeah, so Steve's in this one. He's terrible. Actually, on large, the acting wasn't great. I like Joe Mantegna, but the rest of the people I wasn't too crazy about.

Um, the skinny effects weren't great either, come to think of it. Ah well.

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