euroGary Those who saw 'Witness' (I didn't) may recall Lukas Haas, its child star. Well, now he's grown up and in 'Crazy Eyes' plays a millionaire alcoholic drug-addict who spends his days trying to convince the titular prostitute to have sex with him (given his awful beardy thing it's no wonder she keeps turning him down). The film is okay, but can't seem to decide if it's a serious work or a comedy: hangovers seem to be played for laughs, but family scenes that demonstrate how much Haas' character is ignoring his responsibilities are drama. There's a child actor in this film, too, but unless he gets his adenoids sorted out he's unlikely to follow in Haas' adult footsteps.

Hot 888 Mama . . . and why isn't any of the alleged $10 million budget shown on screen? I could see that the part where Rebecca totals her junker car on a fountain or something might cost a few hundred bucks to stage, but the TV career actors who "grace" CRAZY EYES just seem to be picking up paychecks, as nothing really heartfelt is conveyed. The plot of this flick leads absolutely nowhere, and there is not one character who earns even the tiniest smidgen of empathy. When one finally croaks, the viewer only wishes that the whole story was taking place inside his head, which would have ended this miserable mess right there. No such luck. This story states that the 8 million residents of the L.A. area are entirely interchangeable in protagonist Zach's opening voice-over, and Lukas Haas as Zach does a good job of convincing those unfortunate enough to watch CRAZY EYES through to the close that "Zach" was right: no guy alive in Hollywood could have done a WORSE job of playing Zach as a booze-swilling womanizing loser with totally nothing to remember him by. (Tip for Haas: rent Nick Cage in LEAVING VEGAS.)

hewrote-1 It's 3am. I'm writing a review because this movie doesn't deserve all the hate people are giving it. It's a Los Angeles movie. And it accurately renders one of the ways that Los Angeles can make a person feel. Movies like Spread (w/Ashton Kutcher) and In Search of A Midnight Kiss have also explored the absolute pessimism that effects a certain strata of the city. But this film takes more risks with its characters than the other two and these risks reward the viewer with a more substantial portrayal of life and love after all the dreams are gone. These characters don't exist to uplift you, they exist to make you feel compassion.And they do, mainly because of the performances. Haas and Zima allow themselves to be vulnerable and ugly in ways that movie stars never will. Haas creates a character with a thousand faces and no self. He's a father, a son, a seducer, a cuckold, a self-pitying douche-bag-trust-funder, and a seemingly self-made man at different points in the movie. He's a series of moods stitched together by booze, regret and his desire for Zima. Madeline Zima is also wonderful. And in spite of running around in sexy outfits and lingerie through out the film she is never objectified by the camera or the director. She is particularly excellent in the swimming pool scenes where she reveals her character's heart and authenticity. The director deserves some credit for these performances and for the respect he gives his actors and the characters. Only directorial miss was one messy scene in a bar with a bunch of out of focus camera moves that could have been cut. All the other problems in this movie come from the script. The subplot with his father never resonates and it undermines the main character's climatic romantic decision. And the bar fights seem like the writer threw them in to keep the film from being too talky. The fights look okay, but they don't serve the story or change the characters. In spite of these few flaws, I wanted to know more about these characters when the movie ended. It's definitely worth watching for the performances and overall emotional honesty.

Matthew Stechel I wanted to like this. I liked the look of it, I liked how from the opening scene on it seemed like exactly the kind of movie i would stumble onto at 3 in the morning on cable and try to keep watching just to see where it'll go. The 2 leads are plenty charismatic and definitely deserve to be in a good off beat movie, but oh man was this definitely not worth my, Mr. Haas or the appealing Ms. Zima's efforts to either watch or act in. (i really hope she gets a better movie to showcase her offbeat charm elsewhere tho as even here you can tell that the camera loves her) Film is another movie about a guy trying like crazy to drink his various problems away--and is more than happy to be doing his thinking in a drunken state. At the beginning he gets approached and kissed by another seemingly crazy perma-drunken young woman--and from that point forward is determined to have a relationship with this "crazy eyed" girl at any cost...or would if he was capable of having relationships with other people, etc, etc. Its not a terrible premise--and you've seen this kind of anti hero plenty of times before in films like Leaving Las Vegas, Barfly, or Factotum among many others, but what separates this movie from every other movie about a very troubled alcoholic trying to carve out a relationship with someone whom they feel understands them is um well to put it bluntly--the dialog here is awful. Tremendously awful. Laughably awful. Awful, awful, awful...as well as really really forced sounding as well. Almost nothing anyone says in this movie feels especially real. There's a great scene in the last half hour where Ms. Zima after being presented with a gift of a snow globe (along with a monologue about said snow globe) complains to Mr. Haas "what kind of a person sits around all day thinking of what life in a snow globe would be like?" she then tries to make a point of how empty and how miserable Mr. Haas's life is and how she could never give herself emotionally to him because of that---a scene that is pretty bad by itself, but is made much worse about twenty minutes later when replayed in a string of flashbacks that Haas is having about the people throughout the movie who've been complaining to him about his life. Was that snow globe slam really supposed to be the emotional highpoint of the movie???Haas has a best friend (who is of course the bartender in the bar that Haas frequents) played by Jake Busey--who it should be said is actually quite good as the would be sidekick. The scene where he describes how much he would like to f--k an entire town is one of the few times i actually laughed at the dialog the way it was meant to be-for that alone he should get special mention. Haas also has an ex wife, two parents (one of whom is played by the great Ray Wise and is for the roughly three thousandth time ridiculously underused) and a young son with whom he has a running conversation about the existence of G-d. The running convo wouldn't be so bad if it didn't sound so forced yet again. We get from a string of run-on commentaries that are shown throughout what Haas thinks about humanity and the problems of society and blah, so the stuff with him and his kid doesn't really seem so necessary--and also the stuff with the kid itself--i get that this is supposed to show that Haas is a redeemable character and that the love he shows his son shows that he's capable of loving someone else unconditionally--but none of it really washes since well the film keeps going to the trouble of pointing out that he's really, really not--which i guess may be the point but why go through the effort in the first place then?On the bright side--the dialog that the 2 leading actors have to say to each other in their bedroom sequences together are as awkward as anything Adam Sandler said to Emily Watson in "Punch Drunk Love" a film i reckon this one would very much like to be seen as a companion piece to but can't pull off the energy level of, or the melancholy strangeness of (remember how romantic it was when Sandler said to Watson that "he wanted to smash her face in with a sledgehammer???" dialog makes a couple of attempts to match that--there's a quick scene where Zima asks Haas to strangle her and he gamely attempts to put her in a headlock-- but again, like the stuff with Haas and his son--it just comes off as more forced sounding then anything else.) I will give it this tho--at least when the ending comes--the movie doesn't try to shoehorn in this ridiculous resolution that would probably feel very false given everything else that's happened-but like almost everything else in the movie--the impact of it is completely lost in the fact that its deliver with almost complete and total ineptness. I honestly rarely dislike things to the point that i will actually backpedal and try to convince myself that there were things in the movie that i liked--but the 2 or 3 things i liked here just seem to get lost in the truly lousy everything else that makes up the bulk of this movie. That's an accomplishment tho right? Maybe if i wasn't holding the movie to somewhat higher expectations thanks to the first scene i wouldn't have the reaction i had? let the backpedaling start!