Alan Rickman, left, plays a chemistry professor with an ego as big as the periodic table in "Nobel Son." Co-stars include Mary Steenburgen and Shawn Hatosy.
Unclaimed Freight Productions
Movie Review: Rickman makes 'Nobel Son' fun - but it's no prize-winner
By Roger Moore
Orlando Sentinel
Published: Friday, Dec. 5, 2008 - 12:00 am
| Page 19TICKET
Last Modified: Friday, Dec. 5, 2008 - 1:55 pm
2 1/2 stars
"Nobel Son" stars the great Alan Rickman, over-the-top and deliciously insufferable as a college chemistry professor who treats everyone with rudeness, and the graduate students he sleeps with and the Nobel Prize he's just won as nothing less than his due as a "superior intellect."
He alone is worth the price of admission to this unnecessarily gruesome caper picture. But there's also Mary Steenburgen as his forensic pathologist professor wife, Danny DeVito as an obsessive-compulsive neighbor and Bill Pullman as a cop who pines for the Nobel winner's wife.
The absurdly elaborate plot involving the kidnapping of the laureate's son is driven by filmmaker Randall Miller's attempt at an assaultive style. The younger players, including Bryan Greenberg (as Barkley, the son), Shawn Hatosy and the vampy Eliza Dushku, are up to it. But Miller, an indie filmmaker whose wine- loving "Bottle Shock" was one of the sleepers of the summer, trips himself up co-writing and directing this watchable misstep.
Son Barkley is among the legions who hate his dad, but is something of a screw-up. So when he goes missing on the day Dad and Mom fly off to Stockholm, Sweden, for Dad's moment of glory, it's not that unusual.
When he turns up in the hands of a seemingly brilliant lone kidnapper (Hatosy), no one believes him.
A thumb has been hacked off in a grisly opening scene. The kidnapped kid had one night of passion with a scary-sexy slam poet (Dushku) before being beaten up and spirited off. Did he stage it himself to grab Dad's $2 million in prize money? The cops (Pullman and Ernie Hudson) seem so lost that Mom has to turn to her own forensic and deduction skills to find answers and unravel the mystery.
Montages set to loud electronic house music show us how this caper could come off – it involves disguises, scheming and easy-to-take-apart-and-rebuild Mini Coopers. However, the more montages Miller cuts in, the more details he adds, the sillier the scheme seems.
Rickman wins laughs in every scene, but the laughs outside of his orbit are few and far between. Explicit sex and gore ruin the tone, and the conclusion is so ridiculously pat and far-fetched that it torches much of the good will the film has heading into the home stretch.
Nobel Son - Trailer
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Reader comments on Sacbee.com are the opinions of the writer, not The Sacramento Bee. If you see an objectionable comment, click the "report abuse" button below it. We will delete comments containing inappropriate links, obscenities, hate speech, and personal attacks. Flagrant or repeat violators will be banned. See more about comments here.