This collection of competing clichés, pure stupidity and the bizarrely frequent use of "the F word" is quite unintentionally amusing. Writer Brad Smith and director Leonard Farlinger misfire with virtually everything they try to do in this film. However, they flounder and fumble so blatantly and hopelessly that you can have a decent laugh at their expense.
The movie begins with Ray Dokes (Luther Kirby) getting out of prison. The problems with the movie begin at the exact same moment because it appears that Ray is actually being released from high school detention. Add in the fact that Ray looks like one the murderers from In Cold Blood who's been time transported to the present day and that the character's emotional range stretches from glum to disappointed to apathetic and you can tell right away this film is going to stink on ice. Ray is picked up by an old friend of his father's, Pete Culpepper (Keith Carradine), a saccharinely stoic farmer who's constantly claiming to be poor, yet still has the financial wherewithal to have his own race horse. Pete even has his own foul mouthed hard ass of a jockey, Chrissie Nugent (Rachael Leigh Cook). Ray and Chrissie almost instantly start screwing each other, even though Ray still pines of Etta Parr (Lisa Ray), his old girlfriend before he went to prison. Etta is also losing her farm and considering that neither she nor Pete ever appear to do any farm work, it's not surprising they're in the same boat.
Our villain is the lazy, idiotically scheming Sonny Stanton (Noam Jenkins), who wants to buy Pete and Etta's land for a housing development and also hatches several different nefarious plans involving his wealthy father's race horses. I'm not going to go into any more detail on the plot of this thing because trying to make sense of it gives me a headache. This story is more poorly constructed than a Lincoln Log cabin assembled by a team of feral cats that have had all their legs amputated. Nothing that happens in this film makes a lick of sense.
But it's not only that All Hat is a terrible tale. It's also very badly told. Let me give you just one example. One of the most rudimentary techniques in storytelling is to build up the villain as a real, credible threat to your hero. The stronger and more imposing the bad guy, the greater the challenge posed to the good guy. It heightens the drama in the hero's struggle and makes his victory all the more satisfying. That is as basic as you can get for telling a good story. But these filmmakers not only ignore such fundamental principles, they go out of their way to do the exact opposite. Almost every minute Sonny Stanton is on screen, he's insulted, defied, undermined or humiliated by practically every other character. Even the comic relief supporting roles stand up to Sonny and make him look like a fool. That makes Sonny as menacing as a newborn lamb and sucks all the tension and excitement out of a movie that wasn't exactly going to be compelling in even the best case scenario.
Now Rachael Leigh Cook is cute as the dickens and
well, I was trying to think of another positive element of All Hat but I got nothing'. So, unless you're psycho-sexually fixated on Miss Cook, you can only enjoy this film by making fun of it while you watch. I'd suggest you rent something else instead.
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