Trying to combine sex and horror, Gregg Araki's apparent ambition in the stupid, juvenile, self-reverential movie, "Kaboom," which opens here today, rarely works in the hands of good filmmakers. Imagine how boringly awful it can be with someone like Araki at the helm as both writer and director.
The horror parts are ludicrous. The sex is pretty good, with a goodly number of actors leaping upon a goodly number of other actors. Gender is immaterial in all the he-in' and she-in' that is going on. Some of it is slightly stimulating, with some lovely female bodies, for those who admire female bodies. Most of it is rather boring.
Smith (Thomas Dekker) is a college student, a film major (at least Araki can make fun of himself, which is a good thing). Like many college students, his major interest seems to be in partying, drinking, enjoying recreational drugs and engaging in sexual activities with other students.
He has a roommate, Thor (Chris Zylka), who likes to wander around without clothes on and who is interested in Smith as a bedmate, too. But Smith has a girl friend, Stella (Haley Bennett), and she has a girl friend, Lorelei (Roxane Mesquida), and enjoys her involvement with both. London (June Temple) never says no to a friend and has no enemies, as the saying went when I was in college. Nicole LaLiberte is a beautiful red-haired woman and James Duval is called Messiah, perhaps because of his hair stylist.
In addition to the sex, there are dream sequences, figures gamboling around green lawns and dark forests wearing animal masks, weird dream sequences and much fun among the students. The movie is dark, the plot absurd, the acting barely post-adolescent and the direction and writing no improvement.
And as Walter Cronkite used to say, "That's the way it is. . . ."
Kaboom opens today at the Tivoli
—Joe