Not bad for a black comedy based on a website. We always like looking at Winona Ryder, and her insurance-adjuster romance with uptight Joseph Fiennes is plenty cute. But the meat-and-potatoes of the movie are the outrageous scenes of people killing themselves in idiotic ways. With David Arquette, Lukas Haas, Juliette Lewis, Tim Blake Nelson, and Chris Penn is various bit parts. Any movie in which both Metallica and Lawrence Ferlinghetti have speaking parts is ok by me.
The Darwin Awards made history in Muck’s World because it’s the first Netflix Movie-on-Demand we tried. I hadn’t realized that you get an hour of free streaming time for every dollar you paid on your regular subscription — to ease the transition, no doubt. Once I stopped grumbling about the fact that it doesn’t work with Firefox, the software installed without a hitch, and quality over a cable connection was great. It’s the way of the future! As a man who knows a thing or two about online movie distribution once told me, there’s a reason it’s called Netflix, not NetDVD.
The Darwin Awards. Finn Taylor, 2006. ***
