(WARNING: Major spoilers abound in this review.) If you want to be in on bad-cinema history, drop whatever you are doing and go see "Bug." It is the greatest movie Ed Wood never made.
And after "Eye of the Beholder" and "Ya-Ya Sisterhood," "Bug" conclusively proves that Ashley Judd seeks out these humiliations in a movie script: gratuitous nudity; heavy emission of bodily liquids from the eyes and nose; and dialogue that turns her character into a total ditz.
Our first clue that this movie is off the beam is that it's set in Oklahoma, yet the phone that we see in constant close-up displays a 904 area code. This is an ominous sight to a Florida moviegoer, but I let it pass at first.
Anyway, Judd plays a lonely bar waitress named Agnes. One night, a friend introduces Agnes to a drifter named Peter (Michael Shannon). At first, Peter strikes Agnes as monosyllabic, but soon the two tentatively open up to each other.
Later, Agnes' nasty ex-husband Jerry (Harry Connick Jr.) shows up and gives the movie some palpable tension -- fooling you into thinking that this might be a rational movie.
But soon, Peter tells Agnes he hasn't made love to a woman in a long while, and Agnes commands, "Come 'ere, boy," like a road-company Blanche DuBois. Later that night, Peter gets a bug bite and has a long conversation with Agnes about bedbugs -- because the surest way to score points with a naked Ashley Judd is to discuss insects.
At one point, Peter deserts Agnes, and we're thinking, "Good for her." Then he returns to tell Agnes how the government has been running bug experiments on him, and Agnes gets the worst case of Stockholm Syndrome ever.
Before long, Peter is using a junior-high microscope (where'd a drifter get that?) to examine stuff that isn't even there, and Agnes is so afraid of losing this wack-job that she starts seeing the stuff too.
From there, the movie derails to a completely bonkers climax, with Shannon making like Christopher Walken, Connick doing Jack Nicholson, and Judd doing...well, bad Ashley Judd.
And every bit of it is fascinating. Because who cares about Peter -- when did Ashley Judd start to unravel so dramatically? By movie's end, you half-expect an usher to come around and solicit contributions for Ashley Judd's fading movie career.
And after "Eye of the Beholder" and "Ya-Ya Sisterhood," "Bug" conclusively proves that Ashley Judd seeks out these humiliations in a movie script: gratuitous nudity; heavy emission of bodily liquids from the eyes and nose; and dialogue that turns her character into a total ditz.
Our first clue that this movie is off the beam is that it's set in Oklahoma, yet the phone that we see in constant close-up displays a 904 area code. This is an ominous sight to a Florida moviegoer, but I let it pass at first.
Anyway, Judd plays a lonely bar waitress named Agnes. One night, a friend introduces Agnes to a drifter named Peter (Michael Shannon). At first, Peter strikes Agnes as monosyllabic, but soon the two tentatively open up to each other.
Later, Agnes' nasty ex-husband Jerry (Harry Connick Jr.) shows up and gives the movie some palpable tension -- fooling you into thinking that this might be a rational movie.
But soon, Peter tells Agnes he hasn't made love to a woman in a long while, and Agnes commands, "Come 'ere, boy," like a road-company Blanche DuBois. Later that night, Peter gets a bug bite and has a long conversation with Agnes about bedbugs -- because the surest way to score points with a naked Ashley Judd is to discuss insects.
At one point, Peter deserts Agnes, and we're thinking, "Good for her." Then he returns to tell Agnes how the government has been running bug experiments on him, and Agnes gets the worst case of Stockholm Syndrome ever.
Before long, Peter is using a junior-high microscope (where'd a drifter get that?) to examine stuff that isn't even there, and Agnes is so afraid of losing this wack-job that she starts seeing the stuff too.
From there, the movie derails to a completely bonkers climax, with Shannon making like Christopher Walken, Connick doing Jack Nicholson, and Judd doing...well, bad Ashley Judd.
And every bit of it is fascinating. Because who cares about Peter -- when did Ashley Judd start to unravel so dramatically? By movie's end, you half-expect an usher to come around and solicit contributions for Ashley Judd's fading movie career.