Hush *
(1998)
Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Jessica Lange, Johnathon Schaech, Nina Foch
Directed by: Jonathan Darby
Screenplay: Jonathan Darby, Jane Rusconi

This movie just stinks. Stinks like old shoes. Stinks like banana Chap-Stick. Stinks like exotic French cheese.

Hush is the story of young morons Helen (Gwyneth "Bag of Elbows" Paltrow) and Jackson (Jonathan "I Am Peter Gallagher's Love Child" Schaech), who are living a wonderful up-and-coming city lifestyle at the opening of the movie, despite the fact that it appears that neither of them is intelligent enough to make toast. They have one of those free-and-easy relationships where you sense that they drink a lot of red wine while discussing avant-garde theater and why nobody makes good antique furniture anymore. She is an architect (oh, yeah, right) and he is . . . something else, and the two of them make the perfect couple (assuming that by "perfect," you mean "vapid").

Jackson takes Helen home to meet his mother Martha (Jessica Lange). (I have news for Helen -- anytime you find out that someone in your life is being played by Jessica Lange, you are in trouble. This development ranks, in terms of dangerousness, only slightly below finding out that she is being played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, or that her husband is being played by Gary Oldman.) At any rate, Martha is a horse-breeder, living alone on her enormous farm as she has ever since the long-ago death of Jackson's father. The farm is named, with enormous subtlety, Kilronan. (I suppose this name beat out the also-considered Murderalia, Ominousview, and Evilwood.) Martha is substantially too adoring of Jackson, and it is obvious from the start that she does not appreciate his little friend Helen. In fact, it is obvious from the start that she plans to do mean things to Helen, but Helen doesn't seem to notice, and neither does Jackson (I'm thinking that for one thing, they probably can't hear the music on the soundtrack, which is entitled "The Theme From Unmistakable Foreshadowing.") This is the beginning of their slow torture by their own stupidity.

The peril of the situation is presented in a series of vignettes, beginning with Martha seeing Helen in Jackson's room wearing nothing but her blank expression, and including Helen and Jackson's eye-rolling exasperation when Martha attempts to get Helen to cover up a little for church, that are meant to demonstrate Martha's unhealthy possessiveness. The fact that the dress Helen has chosen looks like it came from a red-lipped girl in a Robert Palmer video and is no more suitable for church than a clown suit is a fact that film overlooks. At first, Helen finds Martha overbearing, but after a while, she learns to ignore all her good instincts and hug the creepy Martha with what appears to be actual warmth. Unfortunately, just as all this warm fuzziness is coming along, Helen and Jackson are suddenly compelled by circumstances to leave New York and move to Kilronan to live with the pushy Martha. (What a concidence! Isn't that amazing?) At around the same time, Helen discovers herself to be pregnant.

Once she arrives at Kilronan, Helen defies the Wicked Matriarch by striking up a friendship with Jackson's grandmother (Nina Foch, who romanced Gene Kelly in An American in Paris about forty-five years ago), who most definitely does not like Martha one little bit. And Martha clearly does not like Grandma, either. One senses that these two women have "issues." Grandma is always hinting about Martha's devious and dangerous ways, but she stops short of giving Helen the kind of direct warning you might expect. Basically, the film spends its middle two-thirds or so establishing something we knew before the opening credits -- there's something about Martha that Just Ain't Right.

It becomes clear as time passes that Martha is just barely hanging on to the few marbles she has left, and is hanging on to Jackson with equal ferocity. Meanwhile, Helen becomes rounder and rounder and more and more convinced that raising her baby in the presence of its grandmother is probably a bad idea. When Helen is a couple of weeks from her due date, Jackson goes away for a little while, leaving Mommie Dearest at home with the little woman. Mommie Dearest, having just had a conversation with the world's least ethical physician, has a plan. As the plan unfolds, one can't help but think, "Who cares?"

And that's the problem. I found Helen to be stupid and snippy, Jackson to be a big wimp who treats his mother better than his wife, and Martha to be one "Boo!" short of scary. As our friends at Mystery Science Theater would say, she's not scary, she's just kinda goofy. The bigger issue I have with the character of Martha is that there's never any indication of why she's doing all this. I mean, by the end, her immediate motivation (meaning what she intends to happen) is clear, but there's no suggestion of what would make her turn out like this. Although bad movies have a tendency to embrace the idea of the random psychotic, I find it much more interesting when there's some way to see what it is that's gone wrong with a person. Consider the lengths to which Martha seems willing to go, she would have to be suffering from a mental illness so severe that I seriously doubt she could have been running a horse farm for the last twenty years without anybody having any idea she was this bad off. To have a character "snap" is fine; to have a character "snap" for no apparent reason is not fine.

It also must be said that both the climactic "scary part" of this movie and the follow-up "payoff" are so dumb they're laughable. Suffice it to say that as the proud aunt of a very, very new little boy, I simply don't believe that if things progressed for Helen as they're presented, Jackson would have shown up, said "Whew!", and gone to sleep. Hello, has anybody in this movie ever heard of a doctor? What's more, Helen's I-Am-Pregnant-See-Me-Run sequence is possibly even more unlikely, as she manages to run through a forest and clamber up a hill into oncoming traffic, but then meekly gives in at the first sign of Martha. Come on, people, let's have some imagination!

As for the "payoff," it comes out of absolutely nowhere. It's one of these scenes where a person who has behaved like a complete idiot for an hour and a half suddenly turns into Sherlock Holmes and lets loose with a Torrent of Long-Held Secrets, the revealing of which causes the wrongdoer to thrash and deny in a highly guilt-displaying fashion. It also has the misfortune of being one of those movies where, when it's over, you think . . . "Ummm, okay. Am I supposed to believe that now everything is okay?" For an ending, it's not much of an ending, if you know what I mean.

Paltrow is too smart for this part, and I honestly can't imagine what she was thinking. How could you not look at this movie and see cliches dripping from every page? As for Schaech, he's a capable guy. He was cute in That Thing You Do!, and he's probably as good in this as anybody could have been. Essentially, though, he's got a whole lot of nothing to do. In a weird way, he's got what is usually the woman's part. Let me explain: unlike most movies, in which the men are the subjects and the women are the objects (with respect to every word from "rescue" to "kill" to "kiss"), this movie is mostly about the women, and Jackson is really only important because of the part he plays in the relationship between them. So he's sort of in the Girly-Role Wasteland. Welcome to Paradise, cutie-pie.

As for Lange, I'm sure it's a kick to play a nutball like Martha, and I'm sure you feel like you're flexing your dramatic muscles when you do things like scream and writhe and throw fits and threaten people's lives. Nevertheless, there have to be better movies out there than this if that's what you want to do. So to those of you who know Jessica personally, pass this on to her: Ms. Linda says this sort of thing is beneath you.

So stay away from this piece of dreck if you value your time or want to retain your respect for some of the fine talent inexplicably lassoed into Hush.