Legacy. Out tomorrow. (*1/10)
Has there ever been a situation where you found yourself thinking “I wish I could get Paris Hilton for this”? No? Me either. I always thought that the second the thought passed through my mind, the one that said I would rather have Paris Hilton here than someone else, well…the sky would fall, all the food in my fridge would rot, brimstone would explode from the umbrella on my patio table and eagles would eat my elbows and my dog. But as of this morning, I am wrong. I has the Paris Hilton thoughts last night, and none of this private aplocalypse has come to pass. And I know what you’re thinking. Why, ever, would you think of Paris Hilton in such a way? I too believed it was impossible, until I saw Legacy.
This is a film released to DVD today, September 9th, by Alliance Films. It’s about the hottest, most shallow sorority on campus. A fat ugly girl is murdered at the sorority house, and the Most Popular, Hottest Girl On Campus becomes a suspect. All of which is fine. This movie has been made countless times before, and a template is in place to create more and more of these movies easily, cheaply and with a minimum of effort. All you have to do is find a girl to play the Hottest Girl On Campus. And for this movie they picked…Haylie Duff. Nothing against Haylie Duff. She does a fine job being the sister of a famous person. But as an actress? She is lacking in skill. As the Hottest Chick On Campus? She is lacking in hotness. And so here’s my theory:
This movie was designed as a star vehicle for Paris Hilton. She has played this exact role before, in movies such as National Lampoon’s Pledge This. I think this movie was offered to her first, but when she found out about the subplot where the Hot Girl’s boyfriend is surreptitiously making sex tapes with her, she felt that it would call attention to her own escapades, and it would undercut her current image as a benign philanthropist. So she refused the role. And they picked Haylie Duff. And I am not suggesting this movie would have been any better with Paris Hilton. In fact, it would likely have been even more irritating. I just found myself constantly wondering why she wasn’t in this piece of crap.
I think, although I’m really not sure, that Legacy is meant to be a parody. The sorority house is all pink. The girls all wear pink. Their house cheer is all about the colour pink. Every guy in the film is the kind of guy who high-fives his buddies after every sip of beer. There are donut-obsessed cops. And one of the cops is Tom Green. Seriously, Tom Green. But Legacy isn’t clever enough to be a parody. In fact, it isn’t even smart enough to make the parody part obvious. So we’re left with a lot of questions. Questions about the intent of the film makers. Questions about the casting decisions. And more than anything, we have questions about why this film was made at all, and why we are watching it.
September 10th, 2008 at 3:38 am
Haylie Duff is freakin’ sizzlin’ HOT!! There’s no way Paris “The Chimp-Faced Dog-Boy of The Rue Morgue” Hilton can compare to the pure womanly ecstasy that IS Haylie Duff!! You’ve got to get your priorities straight, mister, or you need a new pair of glasses.
September 10th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Wow. To each his own, I suppose. Now, to set the record straight, I was not trying to suggest that Paris Hilton is that hot, merely that this was the role she was born to play. ie: a crappy one. Frankly, I really wish that some no-name chick who is ACTUALLY hot got roles like this. Give some no-name hottie a chance. Don’t give it to Haylie Duff because her sister is famous, and don’t give it to Paris Hilton because she flashes her junk in tabloids. My vote here is for Christa Campbell, who has been a bit player in many, many movies but never had a starring role. No acting required in Legacy, just see what she can do! (She’s been in Hero Wanted, Cleaner, Day of the Dead, The Wicker Man remake…and she is SO hot.)
September 11th, 2008 at 3:47 am
I”m not going to say Haylie Duff is hot or is deserving of a role (other than the basic fact that she guarantees distribution and your no namer goes on the shelves and you wouldn’t have a film to hate wishing for Paris Hilton), but your review is horrible, you just pose some wack theory that makes zero sense. Here is why, Pledge This was already shot prior to Legacy had you done your homework, so why would the filmmakers offer her the role she would gladly accept? Legacy is far from perfect, but it’s fun, the whodunit is clearly a parody and you didn’t have the ability to pick that up. The ending homage to psycho is an amazing performance and I challenge you to refute Margo Harshman’s role in this film including the last image.
Legacy 6.5 stars out of 10 (overall), 7.0 stars if Tom Green fan, 7.5 stars if Haylie Duff fan
September 12th, 2008 at 1:28 am
I am speechless. Typeless? Both. An extra half-star if you’re a Tom Green fan? A Tom Green fan? A…wow. Even if you were a rabid Tom Green fan, he appears in this movie for a total of six excruciating minutes. He’s a crazy cop, get it? He pulls his gun on the cops working under him, just to show how CRAZY he is, then he yells at the girls in the interrogation room, and then he disppears. Totally useless. And who, in the world, is a Haylie Duff fan? By this logic, Norbit gets 10 stars out of 10 if you’re an Eddie Murphy fan, and an Eddie Griffin fan, and also a fan of Thandie Newton, Terry Crews, Clifton Powell, Katt Williams, Anthony Russell, Cuba Gooding Jr, Michael Colyar, Marlon Wayans, Floyd Levine, Pat Crawford Brown, Lester Speight, Brian Robbins, Jeanette Miller, Alexis Rhee, Austin Reid, China Anderson and Mason Knight. That’s a chance I’m not willing to take when reviewing a movie. Much as I love both Al Pacino and Christopher Walken, their involvement was not enough to give Gigli extra stars.
And I appreciate the fact that you think this is a parody. I kept thinking that, at least for a while, too. I still think it was supposed to be. But every time it starts to become obvious, the humour in that parody gets tossed out the window when the movie stoops to the level of the lowest common denominator frat-boy movies, either by attempting to titillate with a decidedly unsexy lesbian kissing scene, or attempting gross-out humour when that girl from Californication gives a guy a hnad job - in the middle of a room of people at a party, no less - and then wipes the result of that hand job on the unpopular girl’s face. Either the film makers are trying to be funny, but have no concept of what actually IS funny, or they are going for shock and revulsion, with no regard whatsoever for humour. This is as gross a scene as I have seen since SAW or Hostel. Either way, it has no place in this idiotic movie.
I will say, however, your comment has made me revisit this movie. And while my opinion hasn’t changed, I still went to the end of the movie to see this “homage to Psycho” to which you refer. You challenge me to refute Margo Harshman’s role in the movie, and here it is: She may be the best actress in this film, or at least maybe she would be if she was in this film, for more than two seconds. We’ll never really know. But her two seconds of acting at the very end are the most obnoxious part. It’s that movie cop-out moment where all kinds of people have been set up as possible suspects, and then the killer turns out to be the guy who fixed the cable in Scene One. Oh. Well, that was a waste. And the last image in the film? The ending “homage to Psycho?” Just taking a scene from a classic movie does not constitute an “homage”. Had the rest of the movie been a serviceable homage, even in parody form, to anything else, this may have had more resonance.
But as it stands, it’s just an obvious reference to a much better movie. Calling this an homage is like calling that scene in Taxi where Queen Latifah runs over a fruit cart an homage to The French Connection. And the last image? Not interesting. An OK straight jacket and some uglifying makeup do not a memorable scene make. Although revisiting this movie made me realize I hadn’t mentioned the worst part of it - Haylie Duff’s ridiculous wig is the single worst thing in this movie. It’s ludicrous. Worse than the acting, worse than the writing, worse that almost anything. Except that disgusting handjob scene.
Thanks for the comment though, I welcome a dissenting opinion. Perhaps people will read my review and your comment and decide to check the movie out based on your recommendation. Or on the fact that they are a Tom Green fan. And once they do, I hope they post a comment here as well. On second thought, I guess I wasn’t so speechless (typeless) after all.