With A Friend Like Harry
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Movie Reviews of With A Friend Like Harry
Movie Review: Predictable but Good Acting
Summary: 3 Stars
The plot is predictable & a bit slow in the beginning, but Sergi López gives a great performance as Harry.Movie Review: Serial killer's victim selection process remains unexplained
Summary: 2 Stars
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
'Harry' is a story about an ordinary middle-class couple, Michel and Claire and their three young children. They're on their way to visit Michel's parents when they pull over at a rest stop. While Michel is in the bathroom, he's approached by Harry who identifies himself as a long lost high school acquaintance. Harry alludes to a poem that Michel wrote in high school along with a sci-fi novel as well as pointing to an incident in which Michel chipped his tooth while rough-housing during a soccer match.
The problem is that Michel is unable to recognize Harry and this crucial plot point doesn't really ring true. It's unlikely that Michel would forget about Harry completely especially when we later learn that Michel's dentist father did some bridge work for him and Michel's brother Eric also can recall who he is. Somehow, the film's scenarists implausibly suggest that Michel has become emotionally stunted to the point where he's lost some of his basic memories.
Harry is traveling with his bimbo girlfriend, Plum, and manage to get themselves invited back to Michel and Claire's summer house (the trip to Michel's parents is cancelled when one of their daughters develops a fever). Before you know it, Harry and Plum are sleeping over. Harry is positively creepy as a good number of his conversations involve one kind of sexual innuendo or another. Claire is a bit suspicious but Michel passively allows Harry to insinuate himself into their lives. It becomes obvious that Harry is totally obsessed with Michel, especially when he keeps encouraging him to start writing again--an avocation Michel dispensed with early on during high school.
At first it appears that Michel will become the target of Harry's creepy obsession. But soon we see that it's Michel's parents Harry has it in for. He ends up showing up at their apartment late at night pretending that Michel is in trouble and coaxes the parents to follow him in his car to Michel and Claire's. On the way, Harry maneuvers his car behind the parents' car and manages to push them off the road, down a cliff. While the parents are killed, we never learn why. The only clue that's offered is that Harry was upset over some poor dental work that Michel's father was responsible for in the distant past.
The death of the parents puts Michel into a tailspin. He closets himself away in the bathroom and begins obsessing about trying to finish his 'Flying Monkey' short story which he began in high school. Claire pays a visit to Harry at a hotel where Plum and he are now staying. She mentions to Harry that Michel is trying to write again and crazy Harry thinks that's a good thing. But Claire also makes it clear that Harry's no longer welcome back at the house. Meanwhile, Michel's brother Eric has shown up for the parents' funeral and Harry ends up doing him in too.
The denouement makes little sense. Harry returns to Michel and Claire's summer house and kills Plum after she tells him she wants to start a family. Instead of hiding the body himself, he asks Michel to help him dispose of it by throwing it down a well in the front yard. After Michel helps Harry to dispose of Plum, Harry then simply asks Michel to help him slaughter Claire and the kids. Did you ever hear of a serial killer who becomes obsessed with one family member but wants to kill everyone else? In real life, serial killers end up killing everybody but not here! Michel comes to his senses and stabs Harry with a knife; he then throws him down the well and then shovels dirt so that the bodies will not be found.
All's well that ends well when Claire asks Michel what happened to Harry and Plum and he tells them they had to leave but left "sending their love". The upside is that Harry stoked Michel's creative fires after all. He begins writing a new novel entitled "The Eggs" (Harry earlier had spoken approvingly of eating an egg every morning to help with virility). Claire tells Michel she read his new story and thinks it great that he's begun writing again.
One problem is left unexplored. What happened with the investigation into Eric's disappearance? Wouldn't the police start poking around after Eric's friends start asking about him? And wouldn't they look at Michel as a possible suspect, especially after the recent mysterious deaths of their parents? Some internet posters have offered the dubious theory that Harry is actually the altar ego of Michel and that he is the actual murderer. I don't have the space to debunk that theory here but plenty of well-informed postings refute the entire fanciful idea.
'A Friend Like Harry' expects you to figure out Harry's motives in trying to kill Michel's family as well as his obsession with Michel without much evidence. Yes, there are a few tantalizing clues thrown out here and there but the antagonist's motivations are intentionally left quite vague. And the fact that Harry makes no effort to hide his murderous nature from Michel at the film's end is almost laughable.
'Harry' is a bit slow-moving but basically keeps your interest until the climax. Sergi Lopez can do little in the part of the demented Harry since the script calls for a character that's not plausible. Equally implausible is the character of Michel who never seems to have a clue that Harry wants to do harm to his family until the very end. Director Dominik Moll is obviously aiming for some Hitchcock-like suspense but leaves us with characters that do not add up in the end.
Movie Review: A "Pea-Brained Cow" of a Movie
Summary: 2 Stars
OK, OK - I should have known better. Haven't I been burned by enough highly acclaimed French films? But "Harry" had real promise: a true thriller - not the standard foreign-film avant garde mumbo-jumbo. With highly favorable reviews comparisons to "Momento", and even Hitchcock, how could this possibly miss? Regrettably, it did.Sure, the premise is interesting enough: a rich and eccentric supposed acquaintance from long ago (Harry) mysteriously shows up and immediately begins imposing unsolicited favors and gifts on Michele and his family. So far, so good. But beyond an annoyingly realistic portrayal of the "joys" of automobile travel in a hot car with three young kids, the plot was thinly developed, and the story just a bit too unbelievable to inspire any real credibility. The acting: typical French aloof indifference to what was actually supposed to be happening on the screen. And while Harry had sufficient "creep" factor and mystique to hold one's casual interest, the viewer's curiousities about him are never really fulfilled. In the end, I was left frustrated by the lack of explanation of Harry's ultimate motivation, and his fanatical fascination with the husband/father, Michele. Is Harry crazy? Sure he is - but that alone is shallow excuse for avoiding explanation and closure of the story. With the irony of a Hitchcock or the surrealism of a David Lynch, this could have been a great film. But unfortunately, neither are evident. In summary, it is your basic "'friend' helps man trade his mother, father and brother for a new car, becomes a killer, and finds true happiness" kind of story line. As an offbeat alternative to the standard stuff Hollywood fare, I'd skip this one and recommend either "Mulholland Drive" or "Momento".
Movie Review: Disappointing
Summary: 2 Stars
In usual Hitchcockian fashion, this French thriller is about ordinary folk plunged into sudden terror, but it speeds up and slows down gracelessly; peppered with a few murders here and there, it's just your average two hours of ennui. The first murder scene is so shocking (because the film has otherwise been so dull) that it really wakes us up, if only for the next ten minutes. There's a lot of useless filler material, like phone conversations of which we only hear one end, which in any case turn out to be completely irrelevant to the plot. There's none of Hitchcock's crackling tension, sexual or otherwise, to keep things interesting. Harry has moments of humor, but they are out of place and oddly disproportionate. With all of its boring mystery and emotional detachment, it feels at times like an amateur L'Avventura, with an added scene of Anna being brutally murdered on the rocks, minus the lyricism and profundity.Movie Review: Typical Noirish dreck
Summary: 2 Stars
As a good friend of mine once said "just because it is in a foreign language doesn't mean it's good". He said this to me due to my everpresent need to see the latest foreign film released in the U.S. I thought that this film would be one of a few lone bright spots in a horrid summer of movie watching but it was just a bad as any hollywood thriller. The film wasn't poorly made so much as it was like any film student's script. The elements for a winner were present. The idea of the friend from college becoming obssesed, and the novel needing to be written, these had the trappings of a true and unique film but fell terribly short of the mark, digressing into common b-movie techniques to portray... what? The same thing you could see in any American film in the same genre.Certianly a pass.