'FROM THE HIP'.........THE IDIOTIC 80'S ALL IN ONE MOVIE.......

From The Hip (1987)     Ridiculous and stupid as it is, we can't help but keep a warm place in our heart for this raggedly slapdash movie.......which starts out as a legal "Revenge Of the Nerds" and turns into a lunatic "Law And Order" episode for its second half.....

             We managed a thriving impossibly busy video store when this film came out....(back in the you-bet-Jurassic period when homevideo was fresh and fun for everybody....customers and employees alike......)

              One genre every movie renter couldn't get enough of in those days.........freewheeling comedies built around some wisecracking smartass who turns the tables on asshole authority figures......through a mixture of guile, wit, charm and....(most importantly) an enormous set of brass balls.......

               These movies invariably ended with our hero winning the day, humiliating the douchebags who foolishly stand in his way......and snuggling up with his overwhelmingly cute girlfriend.....

               Who better to concoct a film out of this boilerplate blueprint than Bob Clark, whose cartoonish, dumbell directorial style served him so well in the "Porky's" atrocities and his biggest hit, "A Christmas Story".

                We always thought of Clark as a sort of minor-league Robert Aldrich, with the same blunt, lowest-common-denominator sledgehammer approach to whatever genre he dabbled in.   (Unlike Aldrich though, Clark stayed content with crowd-pleasing pop entertainment.......you'd never see him go off the deep end and make something like "The Legend Of Lylah Clare" or "The Killing Of Sister George"...... )

                 "From The Hip" gives you a full helping of Clark-isms........wildly exaggerated comedy sequences accentuated with physical gags and actors hamming it up to the point where they come close to bursting blood vessels.....

                  The comedic stuff comes primarily in the first half of the movie, detailing the outrageous behavior of a fledgling young lawyer Robin 'Stormy' Weathers (Judd Nelson) who tricks his conservatively patrician Boston law film into allowing him to try a simple case of assault and battery.

               Nelson, in secret collusion with the equally ambitious young assistant district attorney, turns the trial into a media celebrated slapstick trainwreck, confounding the apoplectic judge (Ray Walston, playing to the last row in the balcony).

                 In accordance with the strict rules of this genre, Nelson wins both an acquittal for his client and partnership in the law film, much to the disgust of all the uppercrust senior partners......

                Now here's where the movie turns genuinely interesting, lurching its way into thriller-drama territory. The law Partners exact their revenge on Nelson by handing him the impossible task of defending Dr. Benoit (John Hurt), a psychotic, over-the-top snobbish English professor who used a hammer to crack open the skulls of a whore and her pimp.

               Hurt's role here, a snotty egotistical precursor of Hannibal Lector,  is an actor's dream come true.......armed with dialogue made up of only the biggest words plucked out of a Thesaurus, Hurt has himself a one man "Look-at-me-I'm-crazeeee!" show you can't turn away from.  He's damn fun to watch........even when he's forced into the script's final, unbelievable plot twist.........(not that we fault him. Remember, he's completely at the mercy of the how this genre has to finish up)

               As for Judd Nelson........it didn't take very long for audiences and critics to judge him as a one trick pony.......an actor whose severely limited range consisted mostly of eye-bulging and yelling at key dramatic moments.  Fortunately for him, this being a Bob Clark movie, he at least got to star in a film that played to his one strength........under Clark's primitive direction, all of Nelson's arm waving and screaming fit perfectly.

              Back in the forgiving video-store 1980's, filmmakers could still find a ready and willing audience for a movie so strangely flawed and uneven as "From The Hip".  Whatever it's many, many problems (only a few of which we've detailed here) it remains watchable and entertaining. Bob Clark may have been a simpleton director making painfully simple movies........but he did want to show everyone a good time. With this one......he succeeded in spite of himself.  3 stars (***)