At least the first time Melanie Griffith had work performed on her face, it was legit. One tends to need such reconstructive surgery when a lion plays peekaboo with your head, which tends to happen when Mom and Fake Dad force you to be part of their “great idea” for a movie: to share the screen with dozens of live, untrained, completely dangerous, utterly ferocious, meat-eating jungle cats.
That movie is Roar, and it is bonkers.
The story behind it is more interesting than the story in it. And that’s not just because Roar has no story. Writer/director/producer/insane person Noel Marshall plays a researcher of indiscriminate study in the wilds of Africa. His wife (then real-life spouse, The Birds’ Tippi Hedren) and their three kids (stepdaughter Griffith among them) come to visit, arriving when he’s not home. Apparently he failed to inform them about all his roomies — lions and lions and holy fuck all these lions — so they understandably freak out and run from room to room to room, playing hide-and-shriek for about an hour and a half. Dad finally comes home; they all have a good laugh about it and all is well. The end.
Let me rephrase: “All is well” assumes you don’t care being tackled by goddamn lions every time you stand or take a step. It’s as if Dr. Dolittle quit medicine to become a Third World landlord. The animals may be “just playing,” but Marshall and company are really bleeding. Behind the camera, cinematographer Jan de Bont, later the big-shot director of Speed, was scalped on set — scalped! — and required 220 stitches as a result.
Beneath a mop of hair more unruly than any matted mane, Marshall (one of The Exorcist’s producers; this was his only acting job) strikes viewers as the ultimate peacenik: a nature-loving idealist to the point of narcissism. Imagine if the crazy-eyed tree hugger from Birdemic: Shock and Terror got his own movie, and you’re so close to Roar, you’ll catch mange. All you lack is knowingly putting your actual loved ones in harm’s way for an egotistical lark that screams a mix of Walt Disney and the Marquis de Sade. Swiss Family Asshole, anyone? It’s a literal pet project, to the squandered tune of $17 million.
Marshall and Hedren divorced after Roar was released and tanked. Honestly, I’m kind of surprised their 18-year marital bond didn’t sever long before. Reportedly, it took 11 years to make this movie of theirs. To the film’s credit, it looks like it only took 10. —Rod Lott