Larger Than Life (1996)

Good concept, poorly executed.

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

Larger Than Life (1996): Dir: Howard Franklyn / Cast: Bill Murray, Matthew McConaughey, Janeane Garofalo, Linda Fiorentino, Keith David: Has there ever been a comedy starring Bill Murray that contained fewer laughs than this? Title refers to an elephant as well as expectations, hopes and dreams. Dreary plot regards a man who learns that his father was a circus clown and has left him an elephant in his will. He receives two offers and struggles to get it across country. Much of this is boring routine road movie storytelling directed by Howard Franklin with overuse of fade out shots. Viewers will likely find watching elephants on wildlife programs to be more entertaining. Other than the elephant there is nothing new or interesting here. Bill Murray is at the mercy of laughless material. He not only lugs this sorry elephant around but he also drags around a script that should be shoved up the elephant's anal track. Matthew McConaughey is foolish as a crazed truck driver who gets himself into trouble by just doing what nobody in the audience would think of doing. Janeane Garofalo and Linda Fiorentino play contacts. Garofalo is true blue to the elephant's needs while Fiorentino isn't so upfront about it. Either way both roles are cardboard. Animal rights theme stranded within horrible road movie clichés and a screenplay that isn't so large. Score: 1 / 10

"Quick Change" director Howard Franklin and comedian Bill Murray have literally got a white elephant on their hands in the highly forgettable juvenile critter comedy "Larger than Life," co-starring Matthew McConaughey, Janeane Garofalo, Pat Hingle, Jeremy Piven, and Linda Fiorentino. Murray plays a motivational speaker who finds himself saddled with Velma, a female elephant that belonged to his recently deceased circus clown father whom he never met. When mom and pop went their separate ways, mom got Murray and pop kept the pachyderm. Now, pop's attorney (Harve Presnell of "Fargo") wants $35-thousand to cover the damages that Tarzan's best friend has chomped up while he waited on our hero to claim his inheritance.The only way that Jack Corcoran (Bill Murray of "Ghostbusters") can get off the tusk is to take the animal across country to a zoo, specifically to Mo (Janeane Garofalo) who is willing to buy Velma as part of a breeding experiment in India. This is Jack's first option. The second option, he learns, is a sexy animal trainer who is prepared to up the ante for Velma. The dilemma that Jack faces is who to sell the beast to, either the sympathetic but homely zoo keeper (Garofalo had a similar role in "The Truth about Cats and Dogs") or temptress animal trainer Terry Bonura (Linda Fiorentino), who uses electric prods to make her beasties behave.Getting the elephant there comprises the bulk of Roy Blount, Jr's lackluster, lead-footed plot. You could grow as old and wrinkled as an elephant waiting for an original laugh here. Jack and Velma travel by train, truck, and on foot, but they encounter trouble around every bend. Along the way, Jack tricks a paranoid, speed-freak truckers, Tip Tucker (Matthew McConaughey of "Dazed and Confused") into giving them a lift. When Tip learns that Jack has duped him, he raises a posse of state troopers who follow in hot pursuit, Jack blunders off the interstate and heads into the desert. Velma and he save an antique Spanish church from a flood. The grateful villagers idolize the elephant and helps Jack finish his cross-country jaunt. Film purists will have reason to complain. At one point, Jck dons the outfits that John Wayne wore in John Ford's 1949 classic "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" to elude Tucker. The filmmakers back up this costume change as Jack sticks to the back trails with Elmer Bernstein's classic "Magnificent Seven" theme. Talk about mixing movie metaphors! If you cannot figure out the ending, perhaps you should treat yourself to this shoddy farce that stretches its unlikely partners premises far beyond the breaking point. Either Bill Murray desperately want to produce a flop movie for tax purposes or he needed to return as a regular to NBC-TV's "Saturday Night Live."

I remember back in 1996 when I saw the trailer and television commercials for LARGER THAN LIFE - just seeing them, I *knew* that this was going to be a box office bomb. And I was right. This was not a case of a good movie being horribly marketed - this was a case of the badness of the movie being shown all too clearly.What went wrong? Well, I think that the main problem of the movie centers around the fact that pretty much all the events of the movie center around an elephant. Elephants are slow creatures, and although they can be trained to perform some tricks, they are still far from being creatures with a real charismatic personality. (Maybe if they got a quicker, wittier creature like a chimpanzee or a dog, it could have worked.) As a result of this movie being weighed down by an enormously ungraceful creature, there is no energy here. Even Murray, who has been quick and funny in other movies, seems overwhelmed. He does well in the opening scene where he's a motivational speaker, because he has *humans* to work with. When he's paired with the elephant, the energy immediately fades away.One question that's never answered in the movie is: Why doesn't Murray's character just hire someone to take the elephant to the west coast? It would be a lot less hassle, and Murray's character wouldn't have to skip his lecture dates. The fact that Murray's character doesn't do the obvious thing helps point out that the premise this script had was deeply flawed even before writing began.

I remember seeing this movie with my Aunt a little after it came out in the theaters. We were the only people in the place and that shocked us because it turned out to be a very good movie. I remember saying to her that it was a good thing nobody else was there because we laughed as loud I ever have. I haven't seen it since then but I would love to see it again and find out if it is on DVD. It surprises me that this isn't at any of the rental places I have been to, including the almighty blockbuster. I think I was about 19 at the time it came out. This would be a great family movie too. I recommend seeing this. It is very underrated.