HANNIBAL

Jodie Foster is the best. Nobody else is the best. That isn’t Julianne Moore’s fault. The next thing that I think is important to note is that Julianne Moore is not the problem with Hannibal. There are so many problems with Hannibal and none of them are the result of Julianne Moore not being Jodie Foster. Most them are the result of Clarice Starling getting to do absolutely nothing in this movie.

It’s hard to make a good film. It’s really hard to make a great film. An unbelievable number of things need to go right in order to make one of the greatest films of all time. It is next to impossible to then make a sequel to one of the greatest films of all time that even remotely lives up to the original.

Not only is Julianne Moore not Jodie Foster, but Anthony Hopkins in 1999 is not Anthony Hopkins in 1991. Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs is a great character, Hopkins is at his best acting opposite Foster as Clarice Starling. In Hannibal, Lecter is in Florence for most of the movie. Do you know who is not in Florence and never talking to Lecter? Clarice. On his own, acting opposite nobody in his weight class, Anthony Hopkins turns Hannibal Lecter into a Bond villain.

Hannibal is never as bad as Red Dragon but that’s only because Hannibal is directed by a real director in Ridley Scott and not directed by Brett Ratner, whose entire existence is one long Entourage cameo.

The plot of Hannibal goes like this: Mason Verger, who was left horribly disfigured after a run in with Lecter, is trying to capture Lecter because he wants to feed him alive to wild boars. Also in the mix is the late Ray Liotta play Paul Krendler, a compromised employee of the Justice Department, who ends up lobotomized and fed his own brains by Hannibal. So really the question I’m terrified to ask right now is: where would I fit into Hannibal?

IF I WERE IN ‘HANNIBAL’ I WOULD: NOT BE EATEN AND SPEND THE AFTERNOON TRYING TO WALK OFF SOMETHING CALLED A BACON KING 3.0 CON SALSA BBQ BULL’S EYE I BOUGHT FROM BURGER KING