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Hot-buttered opinion on the latest flicks

The Wicker Man

Fri., Sep. 1, 2006 12:00 AM PDT

Something Wicker this way comes...and you'd be advised to stay away. Unless you just really want to see Nicolas Cage running through the woods in a bear costume. Sorry, he's not helping prevent forest fires--that would've been more exciting.

Cage plays a police officer haunted by a fiery car crash that killed a young girl. So, when his plump-lipped ex-fianc?e asks him to find her missing daughter, copper Cage travels to her home on a remote Pacific Northwest island and is drawn into a bizarre community of earthy types who practice ancient rituals overseen by Ellen Burstyn (the Wicker Witch, if you will).

The 1973 British film on which this is based at least featured naked dancing, free love and pagan partying--gotta love the '70s! But this needless and suspenseless remake, directed by Neil LaBute, strips out the commentary about religion and sexual repression and replaces it with grating flashbacks, horror clich?s and a heavyhanded bee metaphor. See, Burstyn is their queen bee, and Cage--who just happens to have bee allergies--is their drone. Get it?! This wacky Wicker is weak, man.
--Matt Stevens