What happens when a man-eating crocodile begins picking off tourists in beautiful Lake Placid? What if the crocodile wants to make it his home? Lake Placid - Well it would be, but; "somebody said that name was taken." At least according to the local Sheriff. When a man is eaten alive by an unknown creature, the local Game Warden (Pullman) teams up with a paleontologist (Fonda) from New York to find the beast. Add to the mix an eccentric philanthropist with a penchant for "Crocs" (Platt), and here we go! This quiet, remote lake is suddenly the focus of an intense search for a crocodile with a taste for live animals…and people! Watching this movie was a true treat. I'll admit I didn't expect too very much when I rented this. After seeing it I picked up a copy of the DVD on my next trip to the store. The script was tight and the movie moved at a very crisp pace. There was truely nothing missing here. It had suspence and thrills (the part with the grizzly ruled), good effects, a bit of gore (the first victem is the worst), but what really made this movie for me was the characters and thier interaction, especially between Oliver Platt (the excenteric millionaire) and the local sheriff. Truely hillarious and thoroughly enjoyable. I could watch those scenes all night. This movie was the best suprise I've had renting a movie I knew very little about in a long, long time. Marginally effective horror-comedy centers around a lake in Maine that falls victim to unprecedented crocodile attacks. A diligent game warden (Pullman), a fretful paleontologist (Fonda), an iconoclastic crocodile enthusiast (Platt), and an uptight local sheriff (Gleeson), reluctantly join forces to try and apprehend the creature, only to find that the animal is in fact nearly three times larger than the average species. Occasionally startling but mostly comical, this one only really works if you're looking for lots of laughs. The cast is good, and very enthusiastic, but they're helpless against the film's familiar approach where the focal point seems to be bickering characters. ** Amusingly macabre. [16 July 1999]
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