Memoirs of an Invisible Man Reviews
Phil H
Super Reviewer
October 14, 2012
I think the casting of Chase was wrong for the film really, he does add a nice light touch but he doesn't fit the seriousness of it all. You can't help but think Dan Aykroyd or Eugene Levy will pop up and crack a few visual gags. Chase does charm well, adding a gentle feeling but the addition of Hannah as his love interest really doesn't help, she is so so wet and lame, turns the whole thing into real mush.
Effects wise the film is quite good and at the time they did make an impact. Nothing original looking back of course, all the usual type of visual gags and transparency problems one would expect, but some sequences do look good still. Its more enjoyable to watch the special effects knowing no CGI was used, that does make you appreciate the work more and some of it is kinda cute these days.
A pleasant film with no real surprises or much originality. Expect to see the typical bandaged man look a few times, can't have an invisibility flick without the obligatory bandaged man, makes you wonder where he got all the bandages. Also gotta wonder where he gets all the clothes and smoking jacket type attire from, the Claude Rains film really set a trend there.
Bottom line, Chase is the good invisible guy and Sam Neill is the bad CIA guy after him. Personally the offer of being a top undercover spy working for Uncle Sam doesn't sound too bad if you ask me, dunno what Chase's character is complaining about. A wander into mainstream Hollywood type affairs for Carpenter without his usual quirky mysterious thrills, nice film but nothing to shout about.
Not your typical Carpenter film this and certainly not your typical Chevy Chase film either. Everyone knows the basic premise for 'The Invisible Man' and this film is based on a novel so there aren't too many surprises along the way.
I think the casting of Chase was wrong for the film really, he does add a nice light touch but he doesn't fit the seriousness of it all. You can't help but think Dan Aykroyd or Eugene Levy will pop up and crack a few visual gags. Chase does charm well, adding a gentle feeling but the addition of Hannah as his love interest really doesn't help, she is so so wet and lame, turns the whole thing into real mush.
Effects wise the film is quite good and at the time they did make an impact. Nothing original looking back of course, all the usual type of visual gags and transparency problems one would expect, but some sequences do look good still. Its more enjoyable to watch the special effects knowing no CGI was used, that does make you appreciate the work more and some of it is kinda cute these days.
A pleasant film with no real surprises or much originality. Expect to see the typical bandaged man look a few times, can't have an invisibility flick without the obligatory bandaged man, makes you wonder where he got all the bandages. Also gotta wonder where he gets all the clothes and smoking jacket type attire from, the Claude Rains film really set a trend there.
Bottom line, Chase is the good invisible guy and Sam Neill is the bad CIA guy after him. Personally the offer of being a top undercover spy working for Uncle Sam doesn't sound too bad if you ask me, dunno what Chase's character is complaining about. A wander into mainstream Hollywood type affairs for Carpenter without his usual quirky mysterious thrills, nice film but nothing to shout about.
Lucas M
Super Reviewer
May 21, 2011
Another Chevy Chase's film, that could be much better. Despite the special effects, and chilling story, Memoirs is not so funny. But is memorable, for me, at least. Weak.
Universal D
Super Reviewer
May 14, 2011
a john carpenter film, so much is expected, but totally undermined by the lead, doing a bad bogie ...
FilmFanatik
Super Reviewer
November 20, 2007
Not an altogether memorable film for Chevy Chase.
ScoopOnline
Super Reviewer
December 15, 2009
This is Funny. Chevy Chase as an Invisible Man. Women wanted him for his wit. The C.I.A. wanted him for his body. All Nick wanted was his molecules back.
Anthony L
Super Reviewer
September 8, 2009
Memoirs of an Invisible Man is an odd film. It's balance of comedy and drama is a little off and, as much as I love him, Chevy Chase is totally miscast.
deano
Super Reviewer
April 3, 2007
Terrific special effects and inventive comedy combine to make this adaptation of the book by H.F. Saint much more than just another Chevy Chase vehicle.
thefog1331
Super Reviewer
June 7, 2007
Highly underrated action/comedy
garyX
Super Reviewer
February 11, 2007
Chevy Chase and Daryl Hannah "after they were famous" in an action comedy that's neither exciting nor funny. Carpenter strays from what he's good at, tries to go mainstream and falls flat, basically.
Lauren D
Super Reviewer
December 20, 2008
I watched a bit of this on TV about 4 years ago and I always remembered the title. Since I've been a 'bit' obsessed with Chevy Chase lately, I decided to finally watch it. As it turned out I had actually watched 40 minutes of it all those years ago (starting from around 30 minutes into it).Anyway... I actually quite liked it. I'm surprised at the negative reviews about it. The effects were good. It was a bit slow, but not in a bad way. Acting was fine. I didn't feel like it didn't know where it was at. It felt like it was a drama, but not totally serious. And I thought Chevy Chase was actually quite good (could have something to do with this weird mood I've been in, but I'm not really a fan). And I hate Daryl Hannah but even she didn't suck too bad.
iLeo
Super Reviewer
December 13, 2007
Funny!
Lee K
Super Reviewer
July 22, 2008
As far as im concerned this started the downfall that is Chevy's career.
jim222001us
Super Reviewer
August 16, 2007
The under-rated Sam Neil however plays it straight as the villian and steals the show. The chase scenes are entertaining enough as well for me to recommend it. Plus next to Hollowman this movie fantastic.
Ok Chevy Chase wouldn't have been my first choice but he does fine in the part. It's only flaw is that it doesn't know if it's a comedy or a thriller.
The under-rated Sam Neil however plays it straight as the villian and steals the show. The chase scenes are entertaining enough as well for me to recommend it. Plus next to Hollowman this movie fantastic.
kenscheck
September 2, 2012
John Carpenter directed THIS? This Chevy Chase semi-comedy is pretty bad. It doesn't really decide whether it is a comedy or something else. Chase gives his usual mediocrity of this period in his career, and the film just falls flat at every angle. It isn't funny, except for chase shouting "I WANT MY MOLECULES BACK!", and the movie fails to impress or do anything new with the concept of an Invisible Man. Near the bottom of John Carpenter's films, he had lost the touch that did so much for him through the 70s and 80s.
March 31, 2009
A guilty pleasure of mine! I liked seeing Chevy Chase in a more dramatic role! Special effects were well done!
brianv1
December 20, 2007
If you liked this movie at all, then read the book - the movie is a fine adaptation, but the story is deeper than the film could go into and a very good read
October 29, 2007
Nick Halloway (Chevy Chase) is a stock analyst with a pretty humdrum life, spending most of it avoiding work and womanizing. Except, when the movie opens he's sitting in a seemingly empty chair in a TV studio telling us he's invisible--and proving it--then stopping to tell us his story. And his story is simple: thanks to a hangover, he drops out of a scientific lecture to go take a nap when an experiment elsewhere in the building suddenly goes wrong and in the ensuing accident, whole chunks of the building are rendered invisible. Nick happens to occupy one such invisible spot and finds himself in a similar predicament. David Jenkins (Sam Neill) is the government agent investigating the accident who realizes there is a man who is insivible and sees the potentially valuable application of such an entity in espionage. Nick is put off by the reptilian--it's the right word, as much as I hate it as a proponent of removing reptilian and amphibious stereotypes--approach of Jenkins, and runs away, taking it on the lam to avoid being dissected and used.
What was always so fascinating to me in my youth about the film was the approach it took to invisibility. Carpenter takes advantage of Chase's only real skill in humour--physical comedy. He's great fun showing us the things we'd never think of, like having to acknowledge that sometimes it ISN'T helpful when others can't see you, and thinking about how much we must rely on our ability to see our hands for simple activities like eating (especially when he chooses chopsticks for his first invisible meal). Because the invisibility is never explained, we also end up with the reasonable oddity that the things Nick chews, eats and smokes remain visible even as he inhales or digests them--leading to his own nausea at first. He also ends up wet from rain, vaguely defining his body and face for girlfriend Alice Monroe (Daryl Hannah), the same holding true even in wisps of smoke he inhales (probably the most impressive effect). This is the age when digital effects were new, and no one was foolish enough to think they could completely replace physical effects--they are used here only to do the things that are nearly inconcievable, or at least prohibitively difficult, to achieve with physical effects. It's refreshing to see why I used to be so excited about them considering the modern overuse and absolute glut of their presence.
The interesting thing, which I never realized at the time, is that it's carried off almost as a sort of film noir, even if it is mostly a comedy, because we have a hapless loser who finds himself suddenly in over his head--nevermind that most of it is narrated with a low, dry, sarcastic voice of our protagonist, regaling us with his story of falling into trouble he never expected. An interesting twist, I have to say, in light of how I remember the film. The supporting cast? Well, we have Daryl Hannah and Sam Neill, as mentioned--both as good as ever, and as much as I like seeing my favourite actors in protagonist roles (I don't demand heroic!) Sam is very good at this kind of thing. And beyond that? Well now, Michael McKean is a former co-worker and "friend" of Nick's (there's a scene of him with his wife midway through the movie which I recall made no sense to me years ago, but makes perfect sense now, which brought a wry smile to my face), Stephen Toblowsky (who you've seen before, sort of a rounded-off, nerdy version of J.K. Simmons almost) as Jenkins' impotent superior, and George Martin's son (!) Gregory Paul Martin as the overly-tanned egotist Richard.
It's a fun movie, pretty much just like I remember it. It's not the most exceptional of Carpenter's work (and hey, I liked Ghosts of Mars, okay?--though it's more competently acted and assembled than that one) but it's interesting to see how wide-ranging Carpenter's talents are, to the inclusion of a Chevy Chase comedy (and I can also point out Chase is not grating in this, though I never found him overly so anyway).
This is actually another film I picked up to up my "Sam Neill count," but also because it happens to up my "John Carpenter count" (he's second, by number of titles, only to Scorsese in my collection, at least, if you count Masters of Horror episodes)--but another factor is the fact that I've seen this movie quite a few times, mostly around the time it started hitting movie channels of the HBO variety. I remember watching it over and over around then trying to put together the entire plot from catching bits as well as finally seeing it all the way through, and eventually even seeing numerous "making ofs" (probably the fifteen minute ones HBO used to do).
Nick Halloway (Chevy Chase) is a stock analyst with a pretty humdrum life, spending most of it avoiding work and womanizing. Except, when the movie opens he's sitting in a seemingly empty chair in a TV studio telling us he's invisible--and proving it--then stopping to tell us his story. And his story is simple: thanks to a hangover, he drops out of a scientific lecture to go take a nap when an experiment elsewhere in the building suddenly goes wrong and in the ensuing accident, whole chunks of the building are rendered invisible. Nick happens to occupy one such invisible spot and finds himself in a similar predicament. David Jenkins (Sam Neill) is the government agent investigating the accident who realizes there is a man who is insivible and sees the potentially valuable application of such an entity in espionage. Nick is put off by the reptilian--it's the right word, as much as I hate it as a proponent of removing reptilian and amphibious stereotypes--approach of Jenkins, and runs away, taking it on the lam to avoid being dissected and used.
What was always so fascinating to me in my youth about the film was the approach it took to invisibility. Carpenter takes advantage of Chase's only real skill in humour--physical comedy. He's great fun showing us the things we'd never think of, like having to acknowledge that sometimes it ISN'T helpful when others can't see you, and thinking about how much we must rely on our ability to see our hands for simple activities like eating (especially when he chooses chopsticks for his first invisible meal). Because the invisibility is never explained, we also end up with the reasonable oddity that the things Nick chews, eats and smokes remain visible even as he inhales or digests them--leading to his own nausea at first. He also ends up wet from rain, vaguely defining his body and face for girlfriend Alice Monroe (Daryl Hannah), the same holding true even in wisps of smoke he inhales (probably the most impressive effect). This is the age when digital effects were new, and no one was foolish enough to think they could completely replace physical effects--they are used here only to do the things that are nearly inconcievable, or at least prohibitively difficult, to achieve with physical effects. It's refreshing to see why I used to be so excited about them considering the modern overuse and absolute glut of their presence.
The interesting thing, which I never realized at the time, is that it's carried off almost as a sort of film noir, even if it is mostly a comedy, because we have a hapless loser who finds himself suddenly in over his head--nevermind that most of it is narrated with a low, dry, sarcastic voice of our protagonist, regaling us with his story of falling into trouble he never expected. An interesting twist, I have to say, in light of how I remember the film. The supporting cast? Well, we have Daryl Hannah and Sam Neill, as mentioned--both as good as ever, and as much as I like seeing my favourite actors in protagonist roles (I don't demand heroic!) Sam is very good at this kind of thing. And beyond that? Well now, Michael McKean is a former co-worker and "friend" of Nick's (there's a scene of him with his wife midway through the movie which I recall made no sense to me years ago, but makes perfect sense now, which brought a wry smile to my face), Stephen Toblowsky (who you've seen before, sort of a rounded-off, nerdy version of J.K. Simmons almost) as Jenkins' impotent superior, and George Martin's son (!) Gregory Paul Martin as the overly-tanned egotist Richard.
It's a fun movie, pretty much just like I remember it. It's not the most exceptional of Carpenter's work (and hey, I liked Ghosts of Mars, okay?--though it's more competently acted and assembled than that one) but it's interesting to see how wide-ranging Carpenter's talents are, to the inclusion of a Chevy Chase comedy (and I can also point out Chase is not grating in this, though I never found him overly so anyway).
joyouskiss
August 13, 2007
Fun to watch, more of a family flick unlike the other horror movies involving invisible persons or creatures. More drama comedy with Chevy Chase as the invisible man. He plays invisibile man so well they should have made a sequel.
June 7, 2007
-B-
You wouldnt think that john caprenter would direct a movie like this,,,but he did a REAL good job. This is back when Chevy was still funny and did good movies. Havent seen it? Check it out.
-B-
shelerella
May 8, 2007
This was an okay film...I think it would have been better if Chase had did it as a comedy instead...I'm not saying that he can't do a serious drama..He just couldn't do this one...
