The Cell (2000)
Directed by Tarsem Singh
Written by Mark Protosevich
Tagline: "This summer... enter the mind of a killer."
And as an added bonus, enter the mind of a Jennifer Lopez! As you might imagine, it’s full of expensive, bizarre clothes, MTV videos, and a violent man in trouble with the law. Plus, lots of derriere jokes!
The Dreamscape/In Dreams/What Dreams May Come part our movie begins with Jennifer of Arabia riding her horse across the sands while wearing a birdwoman wedding gown. See, Jennifer is a child psychologist thingy who, through the marvels of unexplained science, can enter the mind of her patient, a catatonic kid who hates water. Her therapy sessions consist of her donning a red rubber cat suit (ribbed for her pleasure), getting hooked up to some second-hand Matrix equipment, then invading the boy’s subconscious to urge him to Just Say No to schizophrenia. But since his condition was caused by a brain virus, you’d think that having Jennifer in there too would only make things worse.
Jennifer, a highly trained mental health professional, says earnestly, "He’s living in a world that’s not healthy," and wants to reverse the polarity on the mind-melding machine, which, as we know from Ghostbusters, is highly dangerous. Her scientist colleagues shoot down the idea, so Jen goes home and smokes pot in her underwear, generously shoving her butt at the camera so we can all get a good look at her celebrated posterior. Hey, it convinced us that her reversed polarity idea has merit!
Meanwhile, in the Silence of the Lambs/Seven/Swingers portion of our movie, FBI agent Vince Vaughn, looking like he’s suffering from a serious case of cotton mouth and dope lag, is trying to locate an appropriately bizarre serial killer to spice up the movie. Vince just got his big break in the case: a dog hair, which DMV records indicate belongs to Vincent D’Onofrio. But just seconds before Vince breaks down the door, D’Onofrio takes a bath, which causes him to have a seizure, rendering him totally catatonic.
Even worse, Bad Vince grabbed a new victim while Good Vince was waiting in line at the DMV, and since the girl is being kept in Bad Vince’s automated aquarium, she will drown within a few hours. To add suspense to the movie, why don’t you hold your breath until the girl is located? If you pass out, so much the better.
Vince takes Bad Vince to a specialist in bath-tub related disorders, who says that he is suffering from a rare form of schizophrenia caused by a virus and triggered by a trauma involving water....exactly like the kid in the first part of the movie. What are the odds! The doc explains that drugs can’t help and the catatonia is permanent, so it looks like the girl is doomed.
Vince asks Jennifer if she can get the girl’s location from the mind of the killer. She wrinkles her brow, looks puzzled, and in her best Melanie Griffith voice states, "For severe schizophrenics there's no difference between fantasy and reality." Yup, Jen is one of the nation’s most gifted psychologists—and probably attended the same institute of higher education as Dr. Christmas Jones, the 22-year-old world-renowned physicist/underwear model in The World is Not Enough.
And that brings up a very important question: what would Jennifer’s Bond girl name be? Our suggestions are Professor Bounty Behind, Dr. Abundant Booty, and Mlle. Bébé Gottbach, Ph.D.--but feel free to come up with your own.
Anyway, Jennifer enters Bad Vince’s head, where she sees a boy, representing the nice part of D’Onofrio, and follows him to a barn. He pushes her away from a horse just as panes of glass fall from the ceiling, sectioning it into a science project ("the living horse’) or into steak for the Black Angus restaurant chain. This symbolizes the damage done to D’Onofrio’s young psyche by "Mr. Ed"
Then Jen encounters a king wearing a purple cape that extends for miles. He represents the evil part of D’Onofrio, the part with bad fashion sense. The cape makes his butt look really big, which horrifies Jen, since SHE is supposed to have the backside franchise in this movie, so she signals to her colleagues that she wants out of Bad Vince’s twisted mind.
Good Vince asks her to go back, since she didn’t come up with any useful information except that the demented serial killer has a passion for gadding about, dressed as King Vitamin. She is unwilling to be further subjected to the fantasies of a disturbed mind, but Vince reassures her by telling her a story about a little girl who got her heart ripped out. Jen agrees to give it one more try, if only Vince won’t recount any more personal anecdotes.
For Dr. Jennifer’s encore appearance in Bad Vince’s mind, the director, remembering his acclaimed "Losing My Religion" video, has D’Onofrio look like a demon. When Bad Vince licks Jen, it convinces her that his world is reality, just like the foreshadowing said would happen. The scientists are powerless to help her because turning off the equipment now would cause them to lose their Quake game. But Vince remembers the third rubber cat suit, and prepares to barge into D’Onofrio’s subconscious too. The scientists advise him that the way to snap Jennifer back is to "Hit her with something personal," like Mr. Blackwell’s Worst Dressed list.
Vince sees a rainbow of fruit colors, eats some Skittles, and then encounters Jennifer, now wearing a skimpy black lace outfit, orthodontic headgear, and Queen Amidala’s hair. She smiles cruelly as D’Onofrio pokes a hole in Vince’s tummy and pulls out his intestines, using a Ronco device made just for that purpose ("And boy, does it catch intestines!"). Vince remembers the scientists’ recommendation and confronts Jen with something painful from her past. "You were in Anaconda!" he yells, and the shame frees her—unfortunately, to make The Wedding Planner and Maid in Manhattan.
Vince spots the logos on the machinery holding Bad Vince’s mind together and deduces where the girl is being held. So, with Jennifer rescued and the case solved, his work here is done. However, Jen knows there are more cool outfits for her to wear, so she locks the doors to the lab, reverses the polarity on the machine, and joins minds with Bad Vince again.
This time she finds herself dressed as a nun playing Santa Claus in an Obsession ad. She beatifically tells the boy that she came back to help him like she promised. Then D’Onofrio appears, now made-up like Dirk Benedict in Sssssss. Jennifer changes into a black leather cat suit and black lipstick and wails on Bad Vince while shouting the diva’s traditional battle cry: "My world, my rules!" And her chief rule is: nobody upstages me and lives! She stabs D’Onofrio repeatedly, but he merely smiles, demonstrating that even in her own mind Jennifer is an ineffectual action heroine. So she changes back into the nun outfit and drowns the boy, which makes sense if you ever went to Catholic school.
It’s several days later. Vince, more lethargic than ever, is at D’Onofrio's house, looking for loose change. Jennifer shows up, looking for closure. Vince tells Jennifer he remembers only pieces of his experience with her, and says something about a "drug-fueled mind-bender," which would explain what he’s doing in this movie. They half-heartedly say thanks and good-bye, Jen to get back to the Vogue shoot in her young patient’s mind, and Vince to go over to Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.’s house and smoke a bowl of Panama Red. Finis.
