Review - Crossworlds (1996 - Dir. Krishna Rao)

I saw this on good old VHS when it originally came out in 1996 and my rose-tinted memory tells me that it was... fun. Easily the best way to describe it: fun. Watching it again sixteen years later, I was pleasantly surprised to reach exactly the same verdict.



Joe Talbot (Josh Charles) is your average kind of guy who is not that successful with the ladies (he should use the wink/click combo more, that always works for me). He has average buddies, one of whom is Jack Black in another irritating role. But as luck would have it, a lovely lady called Laura (Andrea Roth), with a rather fetching costume (wink/click), appears in his bedroom and seduces him. Well, that's if you class nicking his necklace as a seduction technique. Everything then goes lairy, with the introduction of a villain, Ferris (Stuart Wilson) and a magical staff that takes the action into multiple dimensions. And Rutger Hauer is in it too.

He must have had a right laugh. He doesn't take the script seriously in the slightest, which is a good thing. At times, he has a similar tone to Rik Mayall taking the Peters and Lee out of the entire proceedings. His performance goes a great way to ensure the jovial tone of the film. The other leads are both likeable sorts too. Josh Charles is a precursor to the monkey swinging Shia The Beef and Andrea Roth plays a straight role as a foil for Mr Hauer's camp antics.

I can remember being amazed at the effects on my first watching. Now, you could knock them up using iMovie. They do the job, though and we can be thankful that they didn't try to create a CG creature.

There are some similarities to The Matrix (1999), but the Wachowksis homaged loads of different films. Every film maker is influenced by what they have seen, it would be unreasonable for them not to be and the two films are different enough to stand on their own as separate entities. Their homaging skills didn't work too well for them on the sequels though... Filthy little homagers.

Crossworlds has its faults. The mythology is not fully explored and the villain's demise is a little lacklustre. But, its tone reminds me of another fun film from that sort of time period: Warlock. So, I think we've all got the idea that it's fun. And there are a lot worse ways to describe a film than that. 'Whipped up bowel contents' being one of them.
6/10
evlkeith




If you like this you could also try:
Warlock, Waxwork, Split Second.