Richard Crouse

At the movies it usually takes at least thirty minutes before my Crap-O-Meter starts ringing, but Nobel Son set off alarm bells right away. The film, which stars Alan Rickman as an arrogant Nobel Prize winner embroiled in a convoluted kidnapping plot, had me squirming in my seat from the clumsy opening scene. It’s one of those movies that has “suck” written all over it in large letters.

The elaborately plotted, but completely unbelievable story involves everything from kidnapping to cannibalism to spoken word poetry to molecular science and a foul mouthed animatronic mall Santa.

Not only is the story far fetched and overly complicated but there isn’t a single believable character anywhere to be found. The characters are also far less interesting than they (or the movie) believe them to be.

Alan Rickman’s is a bigheaded Nobel winner who cheats on his wife with students, and he’s such a lowlife that he then has the gall to give the girl in question bad grades. “When you do “D” work,” he tells her while they are having sex, “You get a “D.” The performance is so over-the-top it makes Mr. T look like Laurence Olivier.

Also unwatchable is Danny DeVito. His take on the formally obsessive compulsive Gastner is the most annoying performance in a career comprised of annoying Danny DeVito performances.

Nobel Son mistakes snappy editing and frenetic sound design for style and an overwritten script for true, entertaining dark hearted comedy.