The Hollow Death and Cosmic Rebirth of Paul Verhoeven

I was reading a review of Hollow Man by Kathi Maio taken from Fantasy & Science Fiction.  Kathi aims to prove 3 points in my estimation:

1) That Hollow Man is a blatant plagiarism of HG Well's The Invisible Man.  Yes. This is fairly obvious. This point is well stated but no big genius yet.  

2) That writer Andrew G. Marlowe is a shitty writer.  Yup.  He is, without a doubt, a joke.   He has written 3 films to date: 

1. Air Force One - Overrated.  Fodder for Hollywood Producer investment portfolios at the heyday of the 90's action-blockbuster genera.  
2. End of Days - critically panned and for good reason since it's Rosmary's Baby born out of the fornication of The Exorcist and The Omen and passed off as an original screenplay.  
3. Hollow Man - Lovely!  The completion of his trilogy!  He's shocked and awed and entertained us all like Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost with the holy trinity of Horror, Action, Sci-Fi...only wait! He got Action and Horror out of order! or is it Sci-Fi and Horror...wait which one of these is Sci-Fi?  The story in Hollow Man is basically this: HG Well's The Invisible Man lifted with magnum force and thrown into a underground bunker in the year 2000 complete with a piece of Bacon fighting a Shue for soulless love, until the subterranean oven starts (Josh) Broilin' and the Bacon starts sizzlin'....everything disappears including the Bacon, leaving the Shue cooked in (Josh) Broilin's oven!  I have absolutely no issue with eroding Andrew Marlowe into dust through a "simple" history lesson as old as time.  His ideas are pointless and without vision.

3) That director Paul Verhoeven has become an "arrogant soul."  Note: As 3's always seem to go, this is the kicker....this is that which removes the "simple" from the History Lesson...so this one's not so cut and dry.  Knowing that even Starship Troopers, with all it's shittiness is still a fucking awesome watch, wouldn't I naturally become offended?  Verhoeven is awesome:  Robocop, Basic Instinct, Total Recall!  The reviewer seems to agree, stating that Verhoeven is that "infamous pornographer of violence and sleaze."  What a statement!  And one I certainly can rally behind.  Ok, so who/what gives?

Well for starters, Hollow Man sucks!  If you don't believe us, start by watching HG Well's Invisible Man (1933).  Where Starship Troopers had just enough of a ridiculous factor to work, Hollow Man plays it much straighter.  Just watch Elizabeth Shue's worried/confused face telling you all you need to know and listen for the deep crackle of some transparent, yet overcooked Bacon saying "It's amazing what you can do when you don't have to look at yourself in the mirror every day."  Follow Andrew Marlowe's Twisterized plot with its culturally inbreed Science-geek love triangles, as he whittles down top-secret government research in a maximum security bunker to cheap horror gaffs and fake-breasted rape scenes.  It's a moot point, when you examine it.  Varhoeven out grew his britches with Hollow Man...in the sense that his head burst through them.  This happens a lot in Hollywood.  Your growing head turns to an ugly head, easily rearing itself if you're not the sole proprietor of a project's writing/directing/producing, which is why most true artists spread out their work over the years.  It's a difficult thing to undergo, unless you're Woody Allen, but even he has been rearing his ugly head over the last dozen years or so, its just so puny and sniveling no one seems to notice (how else does one explain the critical success of Match Point).  

With Hollow Man, Verhoeven looks more like cheap Hollywood garbage washed ashore, rather than the timeless vessel that carries wonderful garbage to empty shores.  Kathi Maio sees in Verhoeven's Hollow Man what many people point to: failure to properly source one's work, and for that he's a joke.  I'd have to agree with the reviewer, even as she admits to Verhoeven claiming "he discovered the source inspiration for his latest film in the work of ancient Greek philosopher, Plato."  That's a kick ass thing to say, but only if one of 2 things been is present: 

1. Plato showing up anywhere in the point Hollow Man aims to make (*Note: it makes no point)
2. Plato being anywhere in the director's vision employed in Hollow Man (*Note: there is no vision).  But...it doesn't even have to be Verhoeven, what about the vision James Whale employs in 1993 with The Invisible Man?  But isn't that another moot point since nowhere in Hollow Man is the idea of the Mind referenced along with the Body and the Soul like HG Wells so purposefully works out In The Invisible Man.  This almost proves it's not plagiarism since the story is so different thematically, being a barren wasteland aiming to generate revenue from an altogether different wasteland, increasingly barren but full of green paper.  

I know Verhoevan has sworn off working with outside writers for now, so maybe it's lesson learned for the great entertainer.  Before he became the arbiter of other people's less the perfect, but always riotous scripts, he made 2 films staring Rutger Hauer: Soldier of Orange (1977) and Flesh+Blood (1985).  Since Hollow Man, he returned to writing/directing efforts with Blackbook (2006) & Steekspel (2011), but I know nothing of them beyond the fact they DO NOT have a blood-thirsty Rutger Hauer which isn't as easy as you may think. 

So it's my review of the reviewer, that another job well done has been done to save the life of a worth while entertainer.  She's made her 3 points and the 3rd, as 3rd's do, has created something...a new movie-making future for Verhoeven.  What he does with it, is entirely up to him...just like the the butler Andrew says to Goldie Hawn in Overboard.  If only all of us had a personal Roddy McDowell as our life-critic.  Rather profound movie that Overboard...shows us the importance of looking at things by whatever means necessary, even if that means Society says "we've gone too far."