Film Reviews: Bridge to Terabithia, Daddy’s Little Girls and more

A A A Comments (0) By L.A. Weekly Film Critics Wednesday, Feb 14 2007

HANNIBAL RISING Once upon a time, before Clarice and the fava beans, Hannibal Lecter was a wee Lithuanian lad orphaned during WWII and left in the wilds of Eastern Europe to fend for himself and his baby sister, Mischa. Until, that is, the day some gauche, gap-toothed army deserters showed up and turned Mischa into mincemeat. From there, this abysmal prequel to the Lecter trilogy — series creator Thomas Harris wrote the novel and the screenplay — follows the adolescent psycho-in-training as he attends medical school in Paris, engages in an oddly oedipal courtship with his Japanese aunt (Gong Li, who also teaches Hannibal some kick-ass martial-arts moves when he isn’t seducing her on her family’s ancestral altar) and, finally, embarks on a revenge odyssey so protracted as to make his namesake’s crossing of the Alps seem like a walk to the corner store. Hannibal Rising, which was directed by Peter Webber (Girl With a Pearl Earring), plays that old game of trying to engender sympathy for the devil by making his victims so loathsome that you don’t begrudge them a hasty demise. The killings are numbingly brutal, though, with endless close-ups (and sound effects) of bloody bowels and flesh being ripped from bone. And as played by French actor Gaspard Ulliel (who seems to have learned his English from watching one too many Bela Lugosi movies), this Hannibal is a stick-in-the-mud altogether lacking in the wit, gourmet appetites and romantic flair required of any surrogate for Sir Anthony Hopkins. By the end of two full hours, it’s only Harris’ head you long to see on a plate. (Citywide) (Scott Foundas)

MUSIC AND LYRICS See film feature. (Showtimes)