IF LOOKS COULD KILL (1991),

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: (1) *sociological*, (2) *metaphysical*

I'm frequently appalled by IMDB reviews that take certain films-- films I regard as ordinary but spirited formula-works-- and treat them as if their mediocrity was an offense against nature.  I've often thought said posters need to be introduced to REALLY bad films to give them some perspective.

Take, for a compare and contrast example, two very lightweight films, both vaguely superhero-ish (if like me you include the superspies in with the superheroes): William Dear's IF LOOKS COULD KILL (with a screenplay by 90210 creator Darren Star) and Lawrence Lanoff's THE CHOSEN ONE.

Admittedly, though both are B-films in substance, LOOKS has a fair amount of money behind it, making for decent explosions, fast car-driving, and other copious spy-movie FX.  CHOSEN looks like it was filmed for whatever the creators could cull out of the wishing fountain.  A lot of small-time productions have proven clever about getting a lot of bang over very small bucks.  CHOSEN is not among their number.

Back to LOOKS: this was one of a handful of 1990s films that promoted Richard Grieco, heartthrob of TV series 21 JUMP STREET, as a possible big-screen star.  Obviously for whatever reason he didn't grab the viewing public, though I think he's fairly charming in this "Brat Pack-spy" concoction.  Like screenwriter Star's most prominent TV successes, LOOKS is all about G-rated sex.  Here it's a young hot-looking American having adventures in Europe with hot Euro ladies (Gabrielle Anwar, Carole Davis) and obnoxious, borderline-campy villains-- Roger Rees and an apparently slumming Linda Hunt.

(Some twenty years later, Linda Hunt now portrays a more beneficient spy-type in TV's NCIS: LOS ANGELES-- and yes, I know the TV-character's not a spy as such, but the NCIS shows definitely inhabit a grey area between spywork and copwork.)

A confusion of identities causes high-schooler Michael (Grieco) to be pulled into various spyjinks involving Rees' threat to dominate the European financial world-- you know, back when there was something left of it to dominate.  There are just enough wild sci-fi gadgets in the story to propel this tale into the category of the marvelous, particularly when Grieco dons special shoes that let him walk down the side of a wall.

There's not an original idea in the mix, but the actors manage to have fun with it without falling into self-parody.  The closest thing LOOKS has to any sort of theme *might* be in your basic spy-world "clash of cultures," but I'm not arguing it very vigorously.