It’s not hard to start watching a movie you might have thought was cool back in the day and suddenly realize that your perspective has changed quite a bit since then. What we thought of as cool when we were teenagers might appear a bit moronic now, and stuff we thought was scary is now a walk in the park and kind of silly. That can happen and it can appear that the movies that we enjoyed so much when we were young were greater than what they really are. Hell, I can remember when someone laughed at the movie Desperado with Antonio Banderas because it was so unbelievable, and I thought it was one of the greatest movies ever. But the point is, the movies we loved in the past are still great, it’s our outlook on entertainment that’s changed. Idle Hands is a great example of this since as a horror-comedy, or comedy horror, however you want to look at it, the movie is pretty goofy and not as epic as it might have appeared. But it’s still a fun and enjoyable movie all the same, even now.
The story isn’t all that complicated, but it does start out in a manner that makes a person question if this is really a comedy since the violent murder of the lead character’s parents makes it clear that it’s not going to be all comedy, and that there will be horror involved. The only thing that we get to see of the killer though is a hand and an arm to start with, so it’s fair to state that unless one watches the trailer to the movie, they’re not going to be entirely certain that they know who the killer is. Being introduced to Anton Tobias, played by Devon Sawa, is enough to make a person roll their eyes as they lay their eyes on a slacker much like many of those that have graced the screen over the years. He’s lazy, he smokes weed, and he can barely be bothered to keep himself looking decent when he walks out of the house.
In other words, Anton is one of the laziest people around, which is foreshadowing in a big way since he’s not the type of person you might expect is going anywhere in life. He has little to no ambition other than to hook up with the neighbor girl, Molly, played by Jessica Alba. Even his friend Pnub and Mick, played by Eldon Henson and Seth Green respectively, who aren’t much better than he is when it comes to being slackers, get on Anton’s case about how he lives his life. When he starts to finally wake up to the reality that his parents are dead, which is brought on by the use of a bloody knife that he uses to make a sandwich, Anton starts to flip out, thinking that the killer is still in his home. When it’s revealed that he is the killer, or rather, his hand is, he ends up killing his buddies when they make their way over to his home, impaling Mick through the skull with a bottle and taking Pnub’s head off with a circular saw blade.
When both of his buddies come back to life due to the curse brought on by his demonic, possessed hand, things start happening as Anton kills two neighborhood police officers, flings the family cat out of the house and across the street into Molly’s bushes, and even manages to hook up with Molly somehow. Things get even worse when he decides to cut off his hand since after becoming detached from its host body, the hand still causes trouble as it seeks to further its goal by sacrificing Molly and causing as much mayhem as possible. At the same time, a demon-hunter, played by Vivica A. Fox, is seeking the demonic spirit and finally trails Anton and his buddies to a school dance where she ends up exorcising the demon after a bunch of hilarious and bloody moments that finally come to an end with the hand being destroyed and Anton’s friends being released from the curse. In other words, there’s a lot to this movie, and while a lot of it is silly and kind of nonsensical, it’s still amusing enough to watch since the movie doesn’t take itself that seriously.
From the gags and jokes that are used throughout the movie, one can see that it’s very likely that the cast and crew had at least a little fun putting things together, especially since in a true teenage style it plays upon the hormonal need for sex and violence, though nothing is ever shown, just implied. To be fair, Idle Hands is the type of movie you can watch when you want the horror and the comedy, but little to none of the drama that might get in the way.
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