Maneater

The wild ‘n’ crazy Gary Busey. A killer tiger. A little boy who insists the tiger is “misunderstood.” Sounds like a promising Syfy movie, no? If only it hadn’t been so lifeless…the possibilities were endless!

Plot Summary

A truck overturns on a rural road in “Taruga County.” (The movie was filmed in Winnipeg, but I got the distinct sense that it was supposed to be a rural Southern town, like in North Carolina.) A tiger escapes, and starts snacking on the unsuspecting townspeople. Can Sheriff Grady Barnes (Busey) stop the “misunderstood” tiger?

Nutrition Facts

Vitamin B-Acting: 80%

Gary Busey turns in a most intriguing performance. His “Saawthun” accent is a hoot, as are his ill-fitting tweed jackets. He swings back and forth between "bemused hamminess" and "zoned out." As long as you don’t blink, you’ll catch the moments when his acting talent comes out.

As for the rest of the cast, you can expect static, dull acting. Except for the mayor, who’s a total caricature of the Jaws mayor. 

Vitamin B-SFX: 10%

A few dismembered limbs and an explosion or two, but really nothing of note in B-movie terms.

The closest the movie comes to “cinematic art” occurs in the dream sequences involving the boy, Roy, and the tiger. You guessed it—they’re shot in soft, gauzy light with distorted camera angles. Sadly, we don’t witness the tiger actually talking to the boy, but it is tempting to envision them as Calvin and Hobbes.

"I haven't seen Susie Derkins lately..."

Vitamin Fun: 40%

The movie starts out strong—I mean, strong in the B-movie way, with lots of cheesiness. Then it turns into the most boring movie in the second half, with a flabby ending. Darn it, little Roy doesn’t even have a serious face-off with Hobbes in which he bellows to the heavens, “How could you betray me, Hobbes? I loved you! I defended you when everybody said you were a mindless killer!”

Seriously, though, the movie’s second half gets too concerned with exploring the characters’ tragic backstories and philosophizing about man’s relationship with nature. Oh, Hobbes kills a few people, but he’s hardly the main concern of the script. This script is heavy on sugar, which brings us to the next category…

Sugar: 50%

This one piles on the tragic backstories with a big red shovel:

1) Roy lives with a super-religious mother who homeschools him using the Bible. As a result, he’s lonely (except for Hobbes).

2) Grady and his wife can’t have children. Guess who they end up adopting when Hobbes eats the super-religious mother?

YUMMEE

3) We also meet Colonel James Livingston Graham, a British hunter who walked straight off a Masterpiece Theater production set in colonial Africa. Or India, as the case is with Graham. Anyway, once upon a time, while hunting a maneating tiger in India, Graham was sleeping in a hut with his family. The tiger crept inside and made off with his 12-year-old son. Graham was accused of messing up the hunt, and his reputation sullied. Will hunting Hobbes heal Graham’s inner wounds?

Plot Fiber: 70%

From what I’ve read of maneating tigers, it’s not at all implausible that Hobbes could evade his hunters and manage to kill a lot of people.  Of course, as per the laws of Syfy, the characters do dumb stuff like split themselves up while hunting for Hobbes. But still, Hobbes doesn’t possess any special powers—he’s not a genetically altered creature or the hideous result of a nuclear bomb. He does what tigers do best: hunt.

The movie also did a pretty good job of depicting the media and public frenzy that would go with the discovery of a maneater on the loose. (Though the websites that appear are very quaint by today’s standards.)

Graham, on the other hand…I want to know how his time travel from 1890s Africa worked. Did he have a DeLorean? Or did he arrive via a Jumanji board?