Movie 91: One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

A wiseass, R P McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), scams his way in to the nut house as he thinks it will be easier than the work detail in prison. When he gets there he rebels against head nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). The he finds out that he won’t simply serve his time, but will be there until they decide he’s fit to leave. He then decides to bust out, after rebelling some more.

This is critically lauded, loved by pretty much everyone and has a hell of a cast. BUT it didn’t do much for me.

Its not terrible, I just wasn’t blown away and I wondered what the big hoo ha was about. Yes everyone does a good or great acting job, more or less, but it just seemed pointless and drifty.

I go in to anything with Louise Fletcher ready to hate her character. This is due to being a big fan of Deep Space 9. Kai Winn is an UTTER two faced bitch. And I’ll admit I have trouble separating the actress from that. Which should have worked for this movie, as Nurse Ratched is supposed to be a tyrant and complete bitch. But I never fully bought that she was. She does some nasty stuff, one or two things, but nothing full on out of no where and malicious. She’s not all that terrible. So I don’t quite get it.

All the nuts more or less stay nuts through the movie too. McMurphy gets the Chief out of his shell somewhat, and until Ratched fucks it up he may also have helped Billy, but there’s not enough character development for me. However I’ll avoid re-writing the movie to what I think would have worked better for once.

As for the cast. Well this is Christopher Lloyd’s first movie, and he’s in his full wide eyed glory here. And I didn’t realise that that was Danny De Vito as Martini. Scatman Crothers guard, Turkle, is the second most likeable character next to the Chief. And Brad Dourif is great as Billy. He’s one of those actors that I think should be everywhere as he’s damned good at what he does, but that’s a bit of an issue with being a character actor. Your either everywhere or not. Not that he hasn’t been busy.

So honestly I don’t think this is anything special, but maybe you shouldn’t take my word for it as I appear to be swimming against the tide. Personally I’d have given best picture that year to Jaws…

Next up: Punisher – War Zone