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But as irritating as "Lake Placid" sometimes is, it also has an easygoing sense of fun, along with one of the more memorable movie monsters of recent years. As its story becomes increasingly outrageous, the film never takes itself too seriously or tries to teach any ponderous lessons. When Kelley's fast-paced comic zingers finally build to critical mass, the ensemble cast starts to enjoy itself and the mismatched ingredients blend into a blissfully, stupidly surreal summer cocktail.

Lake Placid Directed by Steve Miner Starring Bridget Fonda, Bill Pullman, Oliver Platt, Brendan Gleeson and Betty White

Kelley, of course, is the reigning genius of "quality" prime-time TV, and should clearly be viewed as the auteur behind "Lake Placid." Director Steve Miner, a capable genre veteran whose credits include "Halloween: H20" and two "Friday the 13th" films, is strictly a hired hand here. I have mixed feelings about Kelley's work. Officially, I admire "The Practice"; am horrified by the gruesome gender stereotyping of "Ally McBeal"; and check in and out of "Chicago Hope"; In truth, whether you love it or hate it, "Ally," with its distinctive mixture of screwball humor, New Age relationship wisdom and treacly idealism, is Kelley's signature accomplishment.

There are definitely moments in "Lake Placid" when the film feels like one of Ally McBeal's overblown Freudian daydreams, rendered in grotesque detail. Kelly Scott (Fonda) is almost as skinny and skittish as the eponymous single lawyer is, and she's supposed to be a hardcore Manhattanite who's never camped and has a phobia of ticks. When Fonda reads lines like "That's the second time I've been hit with a severed head -- it upsets me," it's hard not to imagine Ally in her I'm-trying-to-cope mode, hands raised before her to demarcate her personal space.

Kelly's reasons for being in Maine are certainly Ally-like: Her boss, who's also her lover (a cameo by "Chicago Hope" star Adam Arkin), dumps her for another co-worker and then conveniently ships her off to the Maine backwoods, ostensibly to investigate a mysterious reptilian tooth found in a dead scuba diver. (No, this isn't set in the well-known Adirondack resort of Lake Placid, N.Y., and the film's body of water is actually called Black Lake -- go figure.) Prissy Kelly collides with laconic warden Jack Wells (Pullman) and lunkhead sheriff Hank Keough (the fine Irish actor Brendan Gleeson, largely wasted here), neither of whom believe there's a crocodile in the lake or want this city girl prying into their business.

The routine stranger-in-town comedy of these early scenes grinds along tediously until the trio actually heads out to Black Lake to meet the Bickermans, the lakefront's only full-time residents. Mr. Bickerman has disappeared, and it seems that his wife, Delores (Betty White), may know a bit more about the area's wildlife than she lets on at first. White's heyday as the lascivious Sue Ann on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" was a long time ago, but she remains one of those comedians who can make one basic shtick -- in her case, that she's a hard-ass bitch in Suzy Homemaker drag -- permanently hilarious. She's tailor-made for Kelley's dialogue: "Here's where if I had a dick I'd tell you to suck it," Delores cheerily beams at the sheriff.

At this point, no one but Delores understands what's really going on in Black Lake, but word that something big may be living in its dark waters has started to spread. Next on the scene, and finally pushing the proceedings into rococo farce, is millionaire mythologist Hector Cyr (Oliver Platt), who travels the globe armed with helicopters and tons of high-tech gear in order to swim with crocodiles, which he considers divine beings. Jack tells him to leave, but Hector snorts derisively: "I'm a civilian, not a trout -- you have no authority over me whatsoever." Hector is a ludicrous character, but that's really the point, and the always-enjoyable Platt (seen most recently in "Bulworth" and "Doctor Dolittle") plays him to the hilt like a low-rent Zorba the Greek, full of bombast, pretension and a love of life that may be almost genuine. His comic-combative relationship with Sheriff Keough is about as sophisticated as a Three Stooges routine, but it leads to some of the movie's most inspired silliness.

All the bickering and pratfalling loosens up "Lake Placid" tremendously -- the alleged sexual tension between Kelly and Jack starts to seem vaguely plausible, and in short order the enormous croc comes roaring out of the lake to kick the plot into high gear. Oddly, the movie's sometimes oafish humor doesn't destroy the claustrophobic atmosphere of the remote setting (captured very convincingly at an artificial lake constructed by the filmmakers in British Columbia), or the effect of the fearsome beast. Miner has directed enough horror films to understand the importance of making the audience wait and then setting up a grand entrance for your monster, and for all the spoofish qualities of "Lake Placid," it delivers an impressive and terrifying behemoth. In fact, this is one of the finest creatures of designer Stan Winston's illustrious monster-making career, and I don't think it's an accident that most of the crocodile scenes were done with full-size animatronic models rather than computer graphics. Here's today's lesson for aspiring geek filmmakers: If you want a really scary movie monster, then, dammit, turn off that Macintosh, head out to the garage and build one.

By the time we get to the final human-crocodile confrontation, the movie still hasn't offered any explanation of how a warm-water reptile grew to gargantuan size in a cold-water lake. But as Delores suggests, the croc didn't start ripping the bumpers off trucks or downing helicopters until humans showed up to harass it -- what gives us the right to decide it should be killed? Kelley's resolution of that ecological dilemma isn't completely satisfying to either human or crocodile, and I suspect "Lake Placid" may not completely satisfy either "Ally McBeal" fans or horror aficionados. Still, he gets full marks for ambition (even if the John Sayles-scripted "Alligator" accomplished a similar generic meld in 1980), as well as for believing that a lightweight summer film completely devoid of teenagers can find an audience.
salon.com | July 16, 1999

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