The film is ostensibly a vanity project for star Demi Moore. Extreme success in Hollywood can be a dangerous thing: a successful actor believes that two big hits makes him an artistic genius. Suddenly anyone will do anything to work with them, including giving them oodles of money and all sorts of control over the production. These projects almost never turn out well, and, in the past, we’ve looked at a bunch of them including Patrick Swayze’s ROAD HOUSE and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s LAST ACTION HERO. These are pompous movies stuffed with all manner of awareness-raising social commentary. Demi Moore, maybe the biggest female star in Hollywood after GHOST and A FEW GOOD MEN, choose to use her power to make a ponderous adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel. In the great tradition of such classic vanity projects as Steven Seagal’s ON DEADLY GROUND, Moore was thoroughly convinced that she was giving the world a huge statement about passion and feminism, when all she was really doing was making a two hour plus movie about stuffy old white people arguing while wearing white wigs and ruffled shirts. The only insight these bombs have are into the mindsets of stars (or directors or writers, though the phenomenon is more closely associated with actors and actresses) who grow so powerful that they come to a point where, literally, they refuse to hear the word “no.” So if Demi Moore wants to have sex with Gary Oldman in a big pile of grain while a slave simultaneously gives herself a sumptuous erotic massage as a red hummingbird flies about, no one can stop her.

It became vibrantly clear that Moore was steering THE SCARLET LETTER in the scenes where her character is banished during pregnancy to a solitary confinement prison where she must suffer and deliver the baby on her own. One would think being locked away, physically neglected, and emotionally tortured would take a toll on the character’s body. Instead, the longer she stays locked away, the hotter she gets! Her hair, previously in a dowdy Puritanical ‘do, goes into a very modern ponytail, with “sloppy” bangs “accidentally” falling into her face. No sores, or boils, or acne either - her skin practically glistens. Only an egotistical star would demand their long-suffering character actually look hotter at her lowest point. How will the audience sympathize with an ugly person?!?

(In fairness, it’s possible that Demi Moore was merely a poor, unwitting pawn in the plan of director Roland Jaffe and screenwriter Douglas Day Stewart, but we’ll never know. It’s unlikely anyone who ever come out and demand they receive credit for their artistic contribution to this movie, because that would imply they were responsible for the scene where a completely naked Robert Duvall shaves all his body hair on camera.)

The loose outline of the Hawthorne’s plot remains intact. Hester Prine (Moore) comes to the New World without her husband and settles into a new life and a new home. She has a secret affair with the town’s preacher, Reverend Dimmesdale (Gary Oldman), which results in Hester’s pregnancy. She refuses to reveal the child’s father’s identity, and accepts, as punishment, a scarlet “A” that she must wear on her clothing at all times. Eventually (and that’s putting it lightly), Hester’s husband, long thought dead, returns and decides to wreak havoc on his wife’s life as a revenge for what she has done to him.

At first, I was enjoying THE SCARLET LETTER and the extreme clash between its artsy fartsy aspirations and its weirdo sex scenes, the bulk of which could form an issue of Colonial Penthouse Forum (“I know it sounds impossible, but everything ye is about to read with thine eyes is absolutely the Lord’s truth.”). Instead of a meet cute, Prine and Dimmesdale have a meet nasty - while on an idyllic frolic in the unspoiled nature of New England, she comes upon him bathing totally naked in a small lake. How do I know he’s totally naked? Because while the camera is focused on his midsection in close-up, Oldman spins underwater, flashing all his junk at us, with only a thin later of glistening water barely protecting us from a full monty. Later, Hester recalls the incident while taking a steamy bath, though she doesn’t do much bathing; the scene consists of Moore posing erotically while she flashes back to the images of Dimmesdale in the lake. Then, because no good sex scene doesn’t involve at least one peeper, Hester’s sex-loving slave spies on her as she bathes, suggesting that she either desires women, or desires to be white, or just thinks Moore has really nice skin and bone structure.

So far, THE SCARLET LETTER more closely resembles any book with Fabio on the cover than the revered classic, and for ugly movie fans, all is right in the world. This is not a tragic, deeply-felt love affair, this is a sexual crush between two people who share a creepy water sports fetish. Unfortunately, soon after Hester and Dimmesdale consummate their passion -- in the scene with the grain silo and the slave’s simultaneous bath time masturbation involving the red bird -- the farcical “erotic” content is replaced by flat scenes starring uptight squares who will never understand how the greatest relationships are formed on voyeurism and the use of large damp rags. This allows Moore to spend an hour of my time sitting and weeping over and over, crying more tears than the contestants in an onion cutting contest.