Love Potion #9 (1992) – DVD

ZERO STARS/**** Image D+ Sound C-
starring Tate Donovan, Sandra Bullock, Mary Mara, Dale Midkiff
written and directed by Dale Launer

by Walter Chaw Love Potion #9 is an indescribably bad film that elicits so many feelings of true hatred it should be classified as a post-expressionist nihilist experiment rather than a romantic comedy. It is a gimmick flick based on a novelty song that manages to be worse than the stillbirth of an idea that spawned it. I can only surmise that it's being resurrected now on the DVD format because of the inexplicable fame of Sandra Bullock–a realization that makes me not only want to sleep with the lights on, but also begin to dread the inevitable digital remastering of Religion, Inc..

Nerdy biochemist Paul (Tate Donovan) takes his troubles down to Madame Ruth (Anne Bancroft)–you know, that gypsy with the gold-capped tooth. She looks at his palm, makes a sign, and says, "What you need is love potion #9." Actually, what she says is that Paul needs love potion #8, which changes a person's vocal cords so that one word drives the opposite sex into a lustful frenzy. We see this happen when Paul's cat gets into love potion #8 and hundreds of neighbourhood felines come running, and we see this happen again when a girl chimp gets a spritz of the stuff and her boyfriend breaks through a wall and humps her cage until he passes out.

At this point, the advisability of any woman taking the potion is seriously in doubt. Isn't there enough rape danger without ingesting a formula that makes any man hearing your voice overcome any obstacle in the pursuit of humping you violently until exhaustion? That's a risk nerdy biochemist Paul's nerdy primatologist colleague Diane (Bullock) is willing to take. Using it first to get out of a traffic ticket, then to woo the "Prince of England" (Dylan Baker), Diane undergoes an ugly-duckling-to-ugly-duckling transformation owing to her newfound sexual confidence and a parade of wealthy sugar daddies. (Watch for TV "Highlander" Adrian Paul as an Italian suitor.) Meanwhile, Paul gleefully beds a sorority house. But will the sleazy misfit pair find a meaningful relationship at last in one another's nerdy arms? The answer lies in an ingestion of love potion #9.

Love Potion #9 the movie is a travesty. It is offensive beyond words, astonishingly unfunny, never titillating, and such a bad idea from the get-go that it becomes infinitely more interesting to discuss than to watch. How do films like this get made? Whose dream was it to make a movie version of a novelty song? Didn't someone know at some point during the shooting that they were crafting something they most likely wouldn't watch? Love Potion #9 continues to try to derive comedy from a prostitute who drinks a giant draught of the potion and finds hundreds of men chasing her down a street, presumably to gang-rape her to death. It's a scene deeply discomfiting in a way that I have seldom felt in any film that wasn't about some combination of serial killers or cannibalism. Love Potion #9 abandons its mystical elements about an hour into the running time to provide a VH1 falling-in-love-to-adult-contemporary music montage meant to convey a true depth of feeling between Paul and Diane en route to a badly telegraphed third act. It's a completely wasted effort as both Paul and Diane are drab cardboard constructs with their only distinctive character traits being either loathsome or bland.

Love Potion #9 also makes fun of homosexuals, which is fairly common for comedies that suck; what is less common is Love Potion #9's suggestion that homosexuality could be overcome with a little of the right potion. The former is de rigueur; the latter is unforgivable. The movie believes that a chimpanzee humping itself to death against a wire mesh is hilarious, and it plays so fast and loose with its premise that you really begin to question why they bothered to introduce the mysticism in the first place. It's distracting and out of place, and it's not 20 minutes in until you're alternately irritated by its intrusion and relived by the respite it offers from the dishwater love story.

To say that Love Potion #9 is a bad film would be an affront to bad films. To say that it could have been worse is to recognize that it could have been directed by Chris Columbus. Sandra Bullock is irritating, but so is everyone else in a production so stultifyingly predictable that it reads a little like a Mad Lib for the entire romantic comedy genre. But beyond being bad, Love Potion #9 is actually disturbing. It has no sympathetic characters, no comfortable situations, and a few suggestions (the aforementioned threat of murder by gang-rape being the greatest of them) that are genuinely disquieting. This schism between the merely atrocious and the socially damning alone might merit a look at it–if Hollywood and America's indefatigable indulging in the junk culture were on trial, stuff like Pearl Harbor would be exhibit A, and Love Potion #9 would be exhibit B. The prosecution rests.

THE DVD
The Fox DVD release of Love Potion #9 features a frankly bad anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) transfer. There is a surplus of colour bleed, especially with any occurrence of red, and there is a horrible mangling of shadows and dark textures. For a film that is only 10 years old, it's hard to believe that a better source print was not available for the transfer. (In addition, there are many jumpy splices.) Still, I suspect that some corners were cut for this release–not that I blame Fox, you understand.

The 4.0 Dolby Surround sound is flat and rote. Although the volume is ample, I had a good deal of trouble picking out Anne Bancroft's gypsy lines, which either has to do with the mixing or the original recording. Whatever the case, I thank whoever or whatever's responsible for the few blissful moments of unintelligibility. The special features include the theatrical and television trailer for this abomination (both of which look grainy, both of which still look slightly better than the final transfer for the film at that), a four-minute "featurette" that is essentially an extended trailer with unrevealing cast/crew blurbs, and trailers for other Fox DVD releases: The Beach, French Kiss, Hope Floats, Never Been Kissed, and Prelude to a Kiss.

99 minutes; PG-13; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 4.0, English Dolby Surround; CC; English, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Fox