Looker (1981) Let's be honest here........
Michael Crichton, the master of mega-selling, semi sci-fi thriller novels (The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park) functioned as a barely competent film director after he moved into that arena....
He depended heavily on the cleverness of his own scripts to see him through,. most of them based on his own books.
A true cinematic stylist might have elevated them into something more than they were (as Spielberg did with 'Jurassic Park')........but with Crichton at the helm, the best he could give his material was TV level moviemaking.
At least he learned enough to point his camera in the right direction.....toward the actors.
His 'Looker' screenplay is sort of a snarky, satiric thriller that aspires to brutally lampoon television's hypnotic grip on a mindless, consumerist society.....(and its obsession with physical perfection....)
A worthy goal indeed, but Crichton was no Paddy Chayefsky ("Network") when it came to raging against sinister corporate moguls manipulating a gullible couch-potato populace.
Crichton's swipes at subliminal TV ads and the sedated home viewers they target never go beyond surface, facile, 'Saturday Night Live' skit level.........but they do have you smiling.
But where he excels is his uncanny. prescient grasp of future technology and science........imagining computers advanced enough to animate digital copies of human beings.....and replace flesh and blood actors.......
Say whaaaaaaat????? Computer people? That can't possibly ever happen, right?
Ooops......wait a minute.........
Which brings us to "Looker"s premise......in which a plastic-surgeon-to-the-stars (Albert Finney) discovers his beautiful TV model patients tend to die right after he surgically touches up their already gorgeous bods and faces.
Finney finds out the babes get bumped off once they've been computer copied by an evil media CEO (James Coburn) and his techie minion (Leigh Taylor Young). The girls' cyber-doppelgangers live on, however, to perform (free of charge, naturally) as perfect specimens pushing floor wax and cars to all us dopey, tube-addicted mouth-breathers.......
It's all breezy and entertaining enough, but you can't help wishing there was a better filmmaker than Crichton in control of it.......
For example, Crichton's oblivious to Albert Finney phoning it in with a bored, listless, is-it-lunch-yet performance......and he's wastes the only live wire in his cast that he lucked into.....Susan Dey, doing a game, funny turn as a gum-popping, wisecracking model who's next up on Coburn's digital hit-list.
Too bad, cause based her work here, the right directors could have turned Dey into a romantic comedy force to be reckoned with.......
But as we mentioned earlier, the film's inherent inventiveness allows it to scrape by as a brief but witty little suspense item........and a remarkable, ahead-of-its-time preview of things to come...... the very essence of Crichton's art.... blending cutting edge science with standard popcorn thrills 'n chills......2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)
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