Naked Lunch (1991) Movie Review, Trailer, Film Still and Poster

Canada, UK, Japan 1991
Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Robert A. Silverman, Ian Holm, Roy Scheider, Monique Mercure
Rating: R
Release Date: 27 December 1991
Running Time: 1 hour 51 minutes

The Movie Review

Naked Lunch film still 1


NAKED LUNCH
Storyline:
Cast:
Ending:
Overall:

An American man named Bill (Peter Weller) is working as Bug Exterminator in a town in North Africa. He is addicted to the bug powder that he uses as insecticide. A nasty habit that his wife, Joan (Judy Davis), shares the passion with. He hallucinates that a typewriter by the brand of Clark Nova assigns him to infiltrate Interzone Inc., a mysterious organization led by Dr. Benway (Roy Scheider). Furthermore he is convinced that Joan is actually an enemy agent that he must kill. In his mission William Bill Lee writes a report that he titles Naked Lunch. And this where his surrealistic journey begins...

Hallucination and Surrealism if combined in a storyline could really be something to keep the audience all eyes and all ears. It could be downright fantasy, whimsical and even borders on pornography or disgusting. It depends entirely on the imagination level of the writers. Of course other elements of the movie should be treated with good care as well. Besides if you are used to seeing movies from the 70's from different parts of the world, it would take more effort from the filmmakers to, at the very least, intrigue you. Unfortunately Naked Lunch fails to entertain, although I doubt that to entertain was the motivation of the director and writer in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, this is a movie of quality, mostly production-wise however. The performance of the actors are all around very solid. Especially Judy Davis and Robert A. Silverman (as Hans) who could perform very convincing with the way they pronounce their words and their facial expressions. Even Peter Weller with his poker face, which was seemingly required by the script to be so, could ooze brilliant performance. It doesn't have to be wooden to be cool as Peter Weller has showed us, unlike Keanu Reeves in The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008). The visual and makeup effects are brilliant even though it is meant to disturb instead of fascinate you, with the highlight is certainly the Mugwump creature (as seen on film still above). But for goodness sake mate.... What's up with the pacing and storyline? So dull and so slow! Even Larry Cohen's It's Alive (1974) feels like Jason Statham's Crank (2006) compared to Naked Lunch.

Naked Lunch's storyline is just twirling around in place. It doesn't go anywhere entertaining or revealing conclusion. I can appreciate art for art sake, but if a movie's contents are this boring then...I just feel grateful I didn't watch this at Cinema. It took me all day long to finish watching the movie, it's because I simply couldn't stand the slowness and the boring situation that I accidentally felt asleep for three times. Besides the disturbing scenes or the pornographic level were put on awkward timing. Taking the disturbing stuff into consideration, The contents of this movie, in fact, don't go anywhere near some sick sick sick movies like West Germany's Dorotheas Rache (1974) or Dusan Makavejev's Sweet Movie (1974), and Naked Lunch is not even as crazy as other Cronenberg's previous movies, which means this fantasy film could still be accepted as an entertainment for more wide demographic of moviegoers, but... Naked Lunch is just a boring and overlong journey to one man's hallucination involving typewriters, and it's not an interesting journey, and the content highly likely would disgust most people. I definitely felt repulsed and disgusted seeing those two International movies but I could still see some artistic value in them and at least stay awake until the last frame.

Unless... you are a big fan of William S. Burroughs as this movie was based on his life and pretty much major characters and key points of the plot were of true people and real incidents. Naked Lunch was actually based on the novel written by William S. Burroughs himself. And two things memorable about the movie that I personally like are the monologue about "The Talking As*hole" uttered by Bill and after watching typewriter bloody-butchered another typewriter then I will never look at typewriter the same way again.