DVD
The Darwin Awards

Starring: Joseph Fiennes, Winona Ryder, David Arquette, Lukas Haas, Juliette Lewis and Chris Penn
Icon Home Entertainment
RRP: £19.99
ICON 10116
Certificate: 15
Available 25 June 2007


Michael Burrows, a recently unemployed forensic detective, has become increasingly fascinated by the number of Darwin deaths being reported and sets about creating a profile for these extreme risk takers. Determined to prove a common theme in these cases. Burrows joins forces with Siri - a clinical, no-nonsense insurance investigator. During their investigation our heroes come across a parade of unforgettable characters: the speed freak who strapped a rocket launcher to his car in his quest to set a land speed record; The two guys who decide that dynamite is the fastest way to break through a patch of ice to go fishing; The teenagers who will do anything to break into a Metallica concert; and the ad executive who is so confident in the strength of his shatterproof window that he throws himself at it despite being on the 25th floor...

Over the last few years The Darwin Awards have built up a dedicated worldwide following. Named after evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin, the awards are bestowed on those individuals who instigate the most idiotic accidents of the year - thereby doing the human race a favour by removing themselves from the gene pool.

Almost everyone has heard of the awards, but the only previous exposure I'd had to them was the once yearly e-mail a friend of mine sends me. Now bearing in mind that I have the world's worst memory and that I only receive my friend's Darwin Awards e-mails once a year, I was surprised to recognise every single one of the cases that appears in this movie.

While the movie sounds like a fun idea, the biggest problem is tying all the accidents together with some sort of running plot. The whole movie revolves around Michael Burrows and his obsession with the awards. After he is fired from his job as a forensic detective, for letting a murderer escape (which seems a little bit harsh), Burrows talks his way into being given a chance to prove that he can save a large insurance company money by profiling the types of people who are likely to off themselves by pure stupidity.

Sadly The Darwin Awards just doesn't have it where it counts. There are too many pointless plot threads that lead nowhere. Burrows's situational syncope, that results when he sees blood, does nothing for the plot - if anything it slows the flow of the movie as he has to find ways to attend crime scenes without fainting. Then there's the totally pointless thread that sees Burrows tracking down a criminal who cost him his job (more on that later). And why is Burrows such a complete nut? What on earth is that shower scene all about? Yes, I know we are told that he has studied the Darwin Awards for so long that he is heading towards being a contender in a future year, but really? A man who is so accident conscious that he always drives 10 miles under the speed limit, but hooks up a crazy gadget to suspend him above a hotel bathroom to prevent himself slipping in the bathtub while having a shower??!!? What's all that about? As Winona Ryder's character points out, he could just have had a bath.

I still can't get my head around the need to have Burrows on some other quest in which he is haunted by the murderer who escaped him. This is a total waste of screen time. It would have made much more sense to have had Burrows start the movie being bored with his job and deciding to approach an insurance company for employment (as he eventually does). The murderer plot thread is really stupid and the final scenes in the movie change pace to such a degree that you feel like you are watching a totally different film. The string of literature clues as to the murderer's true identity are ludicrous and Burrows solves the puzzles in the most unbelievable way. While a lot of this is done tongue in cheek, I was left asking myself why even bother with this flimsy plot development? Would it not have been cleverer to have had the documentary filmmaker as the murder? We are told that more often than not the killer follows the investigator and to be honest the inclusion of the filmmaker adds nothing to the plot at all.

If there really needed to be some sort of clichéd closure finale, would it not have made more sense to have had one of the Darwin Award cases constantly elude him? Maybe the first case he investigates just doesn't add up but, as the movie progresses, he pieces it together until he finally solves it.

In fact the end result is a mismatch of half-baked ideas and poorly thought out plot threads that nine times out of ten just don't work. The main stars of this movie are the actual Darwin Award nominees, all of which have been borrowed for inclusion in this film. When you strip them out you start to realise how bad the writing really is. If there had been more Darwin Award nominees and less attempts at following other dull plot threads, this would have been a much better movie.

Extras are a little disappointing. All we get is a six minute Behind the Scenes featurette. This DVD also has the world's worst menu. Why is it that more and more menus are becoming almost impossible to navigate these days? Their role is to make it easy to navigate the content of the disc, so I was a little surprised to see that when you move your cursor, on your remote control, that it's almost impossible to tell what you are highlighting. All the options are in black text, but when you move up and down on your remote control, the option that you have chosen changes from black to black with a hint of white (i.e. grey that is only just lighter than black).

And, while I'm having a rant, what is it with this insistence on placing compulsory trailers before you get to the DVD menu? This used to be something you'd get years ago on rental videos - where there were several trailers before the main picture started. This was never a problem with bought videos (I assume because video producers thought that if you'd spent money on buying the movie you wouldn't want to have to fast forward through loads of trailers every time you sat down to watch the movie). So why have Icon decided to put a string of trailers on this release that you have to watch? The "menu" button has been disabled to prevent you from skipping straight to the main menu, and while you can fast forward through each one, it's still annoying to have to sit through them before you get to the DVD menu. These are laughingly labelled as an extra on the press release.

At the end of the day this is a comedy that just misses out on greatness by the narrowest of margins. A better team of writers would have been able to create a much better movie. All the pieces are there, just not used very well.

Darren Rea

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