ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 17, 1997 TAG: 9704170025
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: TOM SHALES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: TOM SHALES
``Habitat'' easily takes the prize as loopiest movie of the week. This Dutch-Canadian coproduction (and you don't see many of those) is about ecological meltdown and a nearly mad scientist who finds his own way to survive.
The film premieres Saturday night at 9 on the Sci-Fi Channel, one of cable's most popular networks. ``Habitat'' will do nothing to increase that popularity, but it's just nuts enough to be intriguing and endearing.
Somewhere along the way in the past 20 years or so, the future got very messy. Have you noticed? It used to be that movies about the future imagined it as sleek, shiny and spotless. Even if evil dictators had taken over and everybody stalked around in the same designer peejays, at least the rocket ships ran on time.
No more. Now the future is usually bleak and filthy, as established in such pivotal movies as ``Mad Max'' and ``The Terminator.'' This may reflect growing disenchantment with technology -or just the fact that nightmares of today make us assume tomorrow will be even worse.
At any rate, this is the sort of future world conjured by ``Habitat,'' set in an unspecified year to come. It seems the sun has finally burned through the ozone layer and Earth is now a parched junkyard. Half an hour's exposure to the sun's rays and, zap, you're a french fry.
In the first scene, cops somewhere are busting a door down to roust the fugitives inside a house. They emerge all frothy and gooey and collapse in puddles. What this has to do with the rest of the film never becomes clear. Soon we're in a small town where a newly arrived family sets up housekeeping in a home that turns into its own self-contained rain forest.
That's not all. Daddy, a scientist who has made off with secret government chemicals, sets off an explosion in the basement and, after turning moldy green and crinkly, disintegrates into a zillion little microbubbles. He's not dead. He is one with nature and the cosmos, part of the living organism that the house has become.
Writer-director Rene Daalder is perhaps to be congratulated for the novelty of his vision - the family's jungley house and all its slurpy trappings. But as a storyteller, he's a klutz. For some strange reason, he added a subplot familiar from many a teen-age action picture: The family's resident adolescent is attracted to a pretty girl who happens to be the main squeeze of the reigning high school bully.
This bully, like most, is tiresome from Word One and keeps popping up to clobber people. He is abetted by the school coach, a bellicose misogynistic psychopath who teaches students how to beat one another senseless. The movie beats itself senseless with these ridiculous scenes.
Still, the plight of the teen-age hero, who has been genetically altered to withstand the sun's now murderous rays, is involving, as is his furtive romance. Balthazar Getty, a young actor with a perpetual look of worried surprise, plays Andreas, the boy, and Laura Harris plays Deborah, the girl - who just happens to be the deranged coach's daughter.
Alice Krige, one of the whispiest beauties of the modern screen, plays Andreas' mother and Tcheky Karyo, whoever that is, is Eco-Dad.
Now here's a little insider's tidbit: The version of ``Habitat'' submitted to TV critics for preview is about 15 minutes longer than the one to be shown on the Sci-Fi Channel, and it includes several scenes of nudity that will be removed before airtime. Sorry about that, folks, but then, there have to be some compensations to make the thankless job of TV critic worthwhile!
Even without the nudity, ``Habitat'' has its bizarre charms, as when Andreas complains to his mother about the family diet: ``I am so tired of eating what you scrape off the walls and find growing under the couch!'' Dialogue like that makes the film worthwhile, or, at the very least, one of the kookiest kicks on the block.
LENGTH: Medium: 73 linesby CNB