The movie Crawl, a
sad turgid swamp gator epic about a hurricane induced infestation of human-eating
lizards, has found itself upstaged if not by reality, then at least by recent
headlines suggesting the possibility of meth addicted gators on the prowl in
Tennessee and Alabama. Read more.
That’s because law enforcement officers in Lorretto, Tennessee,
kindly asked residents not to flush their meth out of consideration to the
gators, who might not react well to the toxic stimulant. Biologists quoted in
paragraph five give lie to the wonderfully salacious premise of the article.
Gator experts pointed out that they’d never heard of such things in 40 years of
research, pointing out that alligators and crocodiles would have to be injected
with meth for it to have any effect.
The movie, co-produced by the great bump-jumper sensationalist
Sam Raimi, is equally as disappointing, demonstrating what can go wrong when no
real story line is offered. What Crawl —
starring the underused and underappreciated Barry Pepper as Dave Keller, a
boneheaded ornery swim-coach dad trapped in a flooding basement with a mess of
hungry gators during a hurricane — is a premise, not a story. Although Raimi
floors it — or at least appears to try to — the movie never kicks into any gear.