The Invisible Man

A scientist, experimenting on himself, has managed to turn himself invisible but has not yet discovered a way to turn himself back. The invisibility has some unfortunate consequences: his new found ability to basically get away with anything has given him a serious superiority complex, and he begins expressing his supremacy in increasingly violent and detestable ways.

The Invisible Man turns out to be a much funnier movie that I expected; while not exactly a horror/comedy, the antihero is just so delighted with himself and his evil deeds that it's hard not to crack a smile, even when he's doing some pretty heinous stuff. In fact, the whole movie is more in the spirit of fun than anything else, with the other major draw being the frequent, creative invisibility special effects. You know, doors opening by themselves, objects floating across the room, clothing walking around with seemingly no one inside them, that kind of stuff.

What maybe keeps the movie from being a little better than it is, is that it lacks a center. The main character is really the invisible man, but he's evil and completely unsympathetic, plus its hard to identify with a character if you don't even know what they look like (until the final, pretty cool shot of the film). The ostensible hero of the film is a passive, weak-willed loser who spends the whole movie afraid of/getting pushed around by the invisible man, so we don't really like or care about him either. As a result, it's hard to get too invested in what's going on, even though the humor and the effects most definitely do provide a fair amount of fun.

Grade: B-