Fatal Instinct
What happened with the legacy of the film Fatal Instinct? This brilliant critique of a movie that is a crossbreed of Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, and other number sex thrillers is so funny. Carl Reiner is a unique comic with perfect timing and great direction with lots of jokes in them. I do not get it, as to why have most people have moved on from Fatal Instinct.
Fatal Instinct deserves to be in the same category of comedies as Robin Hood Men in Tights and Hot Shots Part Deux but it has not and that is a mystery. All three of these movies, like the Lethal Weapon/buddy cop spoof, Loaded Weapon, should be remembered as some of the finest and most hilarious slapstick comedies.
In Fatal instinct, it appears that even though he was not born to do slapstick Assante displays remarkable willingness to participate in the quirky chaos of the film. So, when we see Ravine bust a criminal during a stake out at an amusement park, we also see him change sides in a series of rather unfurling about the straw braids which I will not attempt to narrate. Even the rest of the film does not budge from this and more often than not, a better part of the audience may need to see Fatal Instancing round the block to get the underlying laughter in the Fatal Instinct.
One of my favorite early gags is one that I will endeavor to chronicle as it gives you a pretty good idea of what was the sensibilities of Fatal Instinct. In the opening credits, if you are someone who is very particular about music, let us say, a big fan, you may notice a credit for a Clarence ‘Big Man’ Clemons. As a matter of fact, Clarence is in this film and he appears in what is one of the best running gags in which Sean Young playing cunning and sex goddess noir femme fatal Lola Cain is always in need of saxophone music while walking about since she is always followed with a sultry saxophonist Clarence Clemons.
It’s quite a straightforward joke but one that when used later with another well known musician in a cameo gets huge laughs which is the whole purpose of the use of the joke.
Lola Cain, who is played by Young, is a combination of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, and Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. In this way Assante is cast as Michael Doug and it’s a great comic effect. Young is attempting to seduce Assante’s Ned she legs wide like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct only for it to emerge that sooner or later, Assante will always try to convince Nedd that since he has a collection of women’s undergarments, it must be the case that Nedd simply needs some undergarments and doesn’t have any of her own. The beauty of these jokes is their simplicity.
Ned tries not to give in to Lola as he is a married man, or at least believes so. Sharing screen with Ned’s character is Kate Nelligan who acts as Ned’s wife, Lana. As it turns out, Lana is having an affair with a mechanic played by Christopher McDonald, and it’s the worst secret ever! In a wonderful montage, Ned Ravine returns home as an attorney and a sleuth, and gets into bed with a woman, oblivious to the fact that she’s not alone in that bed.
On the other hand, the first thing that Lana sees when she wakes up is the two men lying next to each other holding each other’s hands. This culminates into a sequence of events that are amusing although they are a bit obvious in their direction where McDonald’s mechanic tries very hard not to make a noise while stirring up clamor to wake up Ned. It’s predictable, it’s comical, but it was hilarious because the delivery never falters, so I was laughing all the way through this part of the film.
Some portions of the movie were also objectionable, including some clichés. Overall, I found Fatal Instinct to be too funny, (most) of the time, with one exception. Sherilyn Fenn plays the role of Laura, who is Ned’s intern with cute eyes. But as usual she fancies Ned and doesn’t say anything. Her story is that she came out of a rough relation and that’s a story that doesn’t really sit well in a broad comedy.
The ‘humor,’ if it can be termed as such, is that her husband had this fixation that towels had to be placed and hung in a certain order. Otherwise, he flies into a rage. She gets pregnant and the comic payoff is with her claiming that her husband only hits her when he is holding a towel rack. It’s not funny. Domestic violence is not a laughing matter. It’s just that, unfortunately, one poor bad error in a movie with a host of delightfully fascinating comedic hoaxes. This joke was not meant to do any harm and this was just a bad example of a joke from Carl Reiner.
Apart from that, Fatal Instinct is a rip roaring comedy. The jokes that are spoofs of the sex thrillers of the 80s and 90s really do the trick. Simple gags are the best; people tripping over and falling, Assante’s infamous streak of blue suits and of course, the Max Cady clone from Cape Fear and his great big finale.
This movie also finds time to mock Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, Double Indemnity, Cape Fear and a dozen other cop, crime and sex thrillers from the 40s to the 90s and all with exquisite comic timing. This is due to the genius of Carl Reiner whose closest friend is the most prolific creator of the genre Mel Brooks, but who is a genius on his own.
I Hate Critics 1993 is an interesting podcast for those who wish to reminisce about classic films. The latest episode of the show focuses on Fatal Instinct, which is also the main topic of discussion in this podcast. Each week on the show, the host M.J, who is a millennial, is joined by Gen-Xer host Amy to discuss films that were released exactly thirty years earlier. The intention is to demonstrate how cultural and their viewpoint has shifted within three decades.
It definitely is an enjoyable program that has allowed us to monitor if certain pictures stand the test of time, have some that fail dramatically in their strength as time passes by, and in the case of Fatal Instinct, how a picture can become a treasure, which is lost and later found again. You can follow I Hate Critics 1993 Podcast from the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast feed from all podcast platforms.
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