"David Cronenberg and William S. Burroughs invite you to lunch."

Naked Lunch (1991): 5/10

Poster (c) 20th Century Fox

"I can think of at least two things wrong with that title," The Simpsons stated about Naked Lunch. No one is naked, and no one eats lunch, if my memory serves me right. But considering it's David Cronenberg and William S. Burroughs, does it really matter much? Based off of the latter's semi-autobiographical book, I would not have liked to known Burroughs. And how well a representation Peter Weller does of Burroughs, I don't know, but no matter what type of acting job Weller would have done, it wouldn't save Naked Lunch. It's a bunch of random scenes that may have made sense in the book, when it's easier to turn the reader's world upside-down. Here, in film, it just doesn't work. There's a reason why "unfilmable" films are unfilmable.

Bill Lee (Weller), an exterminator, is caught using some of his bug poison to use as a drug. It turns out it was a setup so a giant talking bug (which hides as a typewriter), which tells him to kill his wife and go to North Africa to be involved in some sort of plot with a mysterious company called Interzone. He writes "reports" about his experiences, et cetera. Crazy, ain't it?

I haven't seen any Cronenberg films before Naked Lunch, but I can say with all honesty that I doubt his ability as a director. He wrote the screenplay, which is jumbled up to begin with, and seems to not know how to make it coherently flow together. Either that, or he's too much in love with his material. The beginning makes some sense-if you exterminate all rational thought. You try to follow where the story's going for up to the first hour, and then you realize that there's no way to comprehend this without having read the book. If you can follow everything Lee says, where the plot goes, why things happen, what it all means, everything like that, you're probably lying. Nothing makes any sense at all, nothing's resolved, and it all culminates into some incomprehensible, disgusting conclusion. Every few minutes you'll be checking your watch to see if it's done yet. At least the opening credits are cool.

Some of the effects are somewhat cool, however, like the morphing bugs. You can never go wrong with Ian Holm, but I must say Weller is a much better Robocop. There were a few memorable moments in Naked Lunch, such as the William Tell sequences and Lee's monologue about the man's...er, loss of speech? Judy Davis, as Joan Lee and Joan Frost, is pretty good, but all of those things don't really add up to a great movie. Maybe if you're on that "literate high" or something, you'll appreciate it, but other than that, I don't really see how people could love it so much.

Rated R for extreme drug use, bizzare images, and language.

Review Date: September 24, 2004