"No, Socrates, nuts aren't just for Ôthose fucking buck-toothed squirrels.'" Willard Rated PG-13 100 minutes

Thursday, March 13, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Full Metal Critic: If you don't like rats, Willard is not for you

If you don't like rats--and really, who does?--Willard is a movie to avoid. Willard is all about rats, and the Full Metal Critic isn't talking about the ones you find at the top of big corporations like Enron, Global Crossing and WorldCom. We're talking the furry, squeaky, cheese-eating, disease-ridden little vermin you find lurking in basements, attics and the occasional palm tree. (No, really, rats do live in palm trees.)

The rat-averse will find Willard excruciating to watch, especially since these are unusually aggressive rats who chew up car tires, gnaw through wood to get into every room in the house and, by the way, kill people. Worse than that, the rats even kill a nice little cat midway through the movie, and that is simply unforgivable. The Full Metal Critic didn't stay to the end of the credits to see if the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals monitored the action to ensure that no animals were really hurt, but even the depiction of cat-related violence caused this one to lose half a star.

Speaking of stars, Crispin Glover is perfect as the demented, pathetic Willard Stiles, who is pushed around at home by his overbearing mother Henrietta (Jackie Burroughs (A Guy Thing). She apologizes for the fact that he's such a loser, and suspects that changing his name to Clark would help get him a girl.

At work--the manufacturing company founded by his late father--he's pushed around by the Type A boss, Frank Martin (a delightful R. Lee Emery, who only turns on half the charm of his unforgettable Full Metal Jacket drill sergeant). Martin wants Willard gone, but a clause in the contract says as long as his mother is still alive and kicking, Willard gets to keep his dead-end job processing paperwork in a drab, dreary office that even the rats would find inhospitable.

So, to sum: Willard lives with his mom, is browbeaten by his boss, has no girlfriend and no life, and on top of that, he has rats in the basement.

At first he wants to get rid of them, and buys a bunch of traps, including that sticky paper stuff. But after finding a cute little white rat struggling to get free, he decides to rescue the little fella instead. Sensing the rat is smart, he names it "Socrates." (The Full Metal Critic's question: If Socrates is so smart, why did he get caught on the sticky paper?)

But Willard makes friends with more rats, who apparently inhabit the basement by the hundreds. Eventually, he trains them to do tricks, like eating tires, tearing up newspapers and jumping into a suitcase for a trip to the boss's house to chew up the tires on his brand-new Mercedes. And do you know what a set of tires for a late-model Benz costs these days?

Although an attractive co-worker (Laura Harring, Mulholland Drive) seems to be interested in him, Willard already has a special friend, although trouble is brewing back at the house, as another alpha-male rat is vying to be leader of the pack. And after a couple of tragic twists, Willard loses his fragile grip on reality and leads the rats into full-fledged mayhem.

As far as horror films go, Willard is more cerebral than most, and you empathize with Glover's character. (It's not empathy in that I-hope-Freddy-kicks-some-serious-ass type of empathy, either.) But, by the end, you just can't feel sympathy for the man who was so isolated that he turned to rats for friendship, affirmation and revenge.