Susan Granger’s review of ‘THE ANIMAL”
“America’s Sweetheart” Colleen Haskell didn’t outlast Richard Hatch on “Survivor,” but the plucky 24 year-old emerges from this crazed catastrophe unscathed – unless you count Rob Schneider’s running his tongue across her face. Schneider plays Marvin Mange, a mousy, mild-mannered police department file clerk who is the victim in an awful automobile accident. While unconscious, he’s reassembled by a weird scientist (Michael Caton) who gives him organs from various animals. So the once-physically challenged dork awakens from a coma with the speed of a cheetah, the olfactory sense of a dog, and the sexual drive of a goat. At the local airport, he’s able to sniff out heroin and nab a drug smuggler and, as a result, is immediately welcomed on the police force by the grateful Chief (Ed Asner), much to the chagrin of his bullying, muscle-bound sergeant (John C. McGinley). He discovers he can outrun a man on horseback and swim like a seal. (All of the best clips were in the “Coming Attractions.”) Since he has no idea about the implants, he attributes his amazing physical prowess to a disgusting beverage called Badger Milk. But his feral instincts prove a definitive distraction in his courtship of a vegetarian environmentalist (perpetually smiling Colleen Haskell) who runs the local animal shelter, not to mention the tufts of coarse hair sprouting from his buttocks. And I won’t even delve into his barnyard flirtation with a female goat in heat. Produced by Adam Sandler, this behavioral fable was co-written by Rob Schneider with Tom Brady and directed by Luke Greenfield, who is obviously a novice. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Animal” limps in with a crass, crude 3. Think of a dumb and demented “Island of Dr. Moreau” Saturday Night Live spin-off.
