Kevin Bacon is hardly in his latest film Hollow Man.  It’s not that his part is small, but he plays a scientist who develops a concoction that can make people invisible.  Like any maniacal super-genius worth his weight, he injects himself with the stuff and ends up out of sight for most of the picture.  You have to wonder if Bacon received his normal acting fee for a film that features mostly his voice.

Hollow Man seemed like a pretty cool concept.  We haven’t seen a decent movie about an invisible character in ages, and all of the films that have tried recently fail miserably because they make the main character sympathetic to the viewer (like Bill Cosby’s Ghost Dad or Memoirs of an Invisible Man with Chevy Chase).  If I have to see a movie about an invisible man, I damn sure want it to be about a guy that’s hell-bent on turning the world upside-down.  That’s what made the original 1933 H.G. Wells classic with Claude Rains so entertaining.  Rains’ Dr. Jack Griffin had one of the coolest lines ever.  Once he discovered his ability to roam about the city undetected, he declared, “I shall begin with a reign of terror.”  Nothing like getting right to the point.  There was another line about making the world grovel at his feet, but I forget the exact quote.

Unfortunately, Hollow Man isn’t in the same league as the original James Whale-directed classic.  It starts promisingly enough, but then degenerates into the typical horror film where a homicidal maniac starts picking off characters one by one (and they never kill him when they have the chance).  Although the special effects are downright dazzling, the problem with Man is that it’s just not scary at all, especially coming on the heels of the year’s best creep-fest, What Lies Beneath.

Bacon (My Dog Skip) plays Sebastian Caine, the egomaniac lead scientist working on a top-secret project for the U.S. military.  As Man opens, Caine and his co-workers have created two serums – one to make you invisible, and one to make you visible.  Although they’ve successfully tested the red and blue juice on a gorilla, Caine tells his overlords at the Pentagon that he needs more time to work on his project.  It’s just an excuse, as Caine is reluctant to hand over control of his “baby” to the government.

Instead, Caine decides to inject himself with the serum in what is supposed to be a controlled three-day experiment.  Of course, things don’t go as planned (they never do), and Caine ends up terrifying his co-workers in their remote and secure laboratory.  Like I said, things start promisingly, with Caine fondling the boobs of a co-worker and sneaking into a neighbor’s apartment to watch her get undressed.  But it’s all downhill from there as the character is basically reduced to an angry Peeping Tom.  Is Caine’s problem a medical side effect, or just a zany power trip?  I don’t know, but you do get to see his package on several occasions and in several different stages of animation.

If anything, Man will be good for helping people play the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game.  Man features a healthy cast of “B” and “C” list stars that should make the game easier.  Elisabeth Shue (Molly) plays Caine’s ex-girlfriend, who is currently seeing a fellow scientist played by Josh Brolin (The Mod Squad).  Greg Grunberg (Felicity), Joey Slotnick (Pirates of the Silicon Valley), Kim Dickens (Mercury Rising) and William Devane (Payback and the upcoming Space Cowboys) round out the cast.  Now I can do The White Power Ranger in two moves.

Man was directed by Paul Verhoeven (Starship Troopers), who probably makes the most out of Andrew W. Marlowe’s (End of Days) disappointing script.  Verhoeven (and his usual cinematographer Jost Vacano) know how to make a film appealing to the eyes, and Man’s frightening special effects are probably the best I’ve seen since The Matrix, but the dialogue is atrocious and the one-liners grow cornier and cornier as the film goes on.  Are the effects worth the price of admission?  Probably.  And the good parts are all in the first 30 minutes, so you can even leave early and avoid the rest of the second-rate story.

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