THE AISLE SEAT - "SENSELESS"

by Mike McGranaghan

I'm always amazed when talent runs through a family. Take the Wayans clan for instance; the family has produced some of the funniest people on the planet. However, when it comes to movies, the results have been mixed. Keenen Ivory Wayans is inexplicably determined to become an action star (A Low Down Dirty Shame, Most Wanted), while Damon has wavered between generic action pictures (The Last Boy Scout, Bulletproof) and lame comedies (The Great White Hype). This has left the two younger brothers - Marlon and Shawn - to fill the comedy void. Together, they scored with the hilarious Don't Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood. Now, Marlon again proves himself to be a major comedic talent with Senseless, a film that unfortunately sinks around his inspired performance.

Wayans plays Darryl Witherspoon, a college student determined to make it on Wall Street. Each year, the university's business department has a competition in which the winner is named Junior Analyst for a major corporation. Darryl wants to win, although his main competitor - an obnoxious preppy (annoyingly played by David Spade in what must be his hundredth obnoxious preppy role) - appears to have the edge. Broke but ambitious, Darryl volunteers to be a guinea pig for a professor who needs someone to test his new drug.

The drug gives Darryl super-senses; he can see, hear, smell, feel, and taste things at a level ten times greater than normal. This allows him to gain an unfair advantage in the competition (he can read stock prices from a newspaper across the room). It also allows the film to engage in lots of scatological and sexual humor. One of the funniest (and most lowbrow) moments comes when Darryl experiences a nasty side effect of the drug: massive rectal itching. As the competition draws closer, he takes an extra dose of the drug hoping to seal his victory. But the overdose causes a malfunction in which only four of his senses work at any given time.

In many ways, Senseless is a vehicle designed to show off the comedy skills of Marlon Wayans. The concept (which is both interesting and clever) allows him to mug, flail about, and exhibit a truckload of manic energy. And, in fact, it works as an example of what the comedian can do. I laughed often at his antics, especially a scene in which he adopts several disguises and accents to fool workers at a blood bank into letting him donate multiple times. Wayans has a natural sense of timing as well as a real ingenuity that I found admirable.

But as amusing as he is, the rest of Senseless is old hat. The cliches are almost endless - from the snooty rival who wants to ruin the hero, to the girlfriend who thinks she's being cheated on, to the happy accidents that allow the hero to thrive when, in reality, he should be screwing himself right into the ground. With the help of the drug, Darryl schemes to upstage the snob, get the girl, and land the job. Not exactly an original idea. The one good thing is that we see Darryl demonstrating some real business knowledge; he's not just a doofus who blindly fumbles his way through life.

Then there's the matter of the ending. For some reason, the subplot about the drug is dropped at the end, leaving the audience to wonder what happened with the experiment. In the beginning, the character of the professor is very important. At the end, he is conspicuously absent. What happened to his experiment? What uses does he have for it? Will Darryl have any serious long-term side effects? As clever as the premise is, it's ultimately just a ruse to allow Wayans to stare at women's body parts up close and do other like-minded things. I wasn't expecting a scientific treatise, but a little wrap-up would have been nice. Director Penelope Spheeris has made better films (Wayne's World) and much, much worse ones (The Beverly Hillbillies, Black Sheep), but she has always tied up her loose ends. What happened here?

For what it's worth, I found Senseless to be painless viewing. Marlon Wayans made me laugh, and I liked his roommate (Matthew Lillard from Scream) a faddish young man who probably has had one too many body piercings. But while there are some laughs, the movie as a whole is overly familiar and seriously underwhelming; you laugh at Wayans, not at the movie itself. The star looks to have a bright future on the big screen, but he's got to choose material that is worthy of his skills.

( 1/2 out of four)

Senseless is rated R for profanity and sexual humor. The running time is 95 minutes.