Good story, Not enough for a whole film

As Good As It Gets

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

In a bleak near future the world has really gone to seed due to severe pollution. Toxic smog, acid rain, and grotesquely mutated animals are all direct results of this environmental decay. Ruthless industrialist Roberto Cervantes (a nicely reprehensible portrayal by Gerardo Albarran) makes matters worse by illegally dumping plutonium. Sweet, but feisty school teacher Irina (a fine performance by the fetching Rosanna San Juan) and kindly professor Axel (winningly played by Miguel Angel Rodriguez) try to stop Cervantes. Moreover, a giant lethal humanoid rat runs amok in Irina's house. Director Ruben Galindo, Jr. relates the interesting story at a steady pace, creates a substantial amount of tension (the last third is especially stirring and suspenseful), and stages the rat attack scenes with considerable flair to spare. Kudos are also in order for the uniformly sound acting from a capable cast, Javier Cruz, Jr.'s polished cinematography (the Dutch camera angles and use of hand-held camera are both very neat and impressive), the funky guy-in-a-hairy-suit creature, Federico Chavez's rattling, shuddery score, an excellent and exciting protracted knock-down, drag-out, no-holds-barred rough'n'tumble fight between Axel and Cervantes, and the strong anti-pollution message. A fun flick.