Amazon.com video review:
Lake Placid is total trash--and, as a result, fairly entertaining. Yet another entry in
the horror subgenre of giant animals running amok, Lake Placid
features a giant crocodile that has somehow found its way to an isolated
lake in Maine. The absurdity of crocodiles in Maine sets the tone for the
entire movie, which has no ambitions beyond mixing a little fright with a
little humor. Bridget Fonda (Point of No Return, Jackie
Brown) plays a paleontologist sent to investigate a large tooth; Bill
Pullman (Independence Day, Lost Highway) is a fish and game
warden just trying to keep the peace; Oliver Platt (Funny Bones,
Flatliners) plays a loose-cannon mythology professor who swims with
crocodiles for sport; and Brendan Gleeson (an excellent but little-known
actor, most noted for The General) is a local sheriff with a short
temper and a big gun. Add a few gruesome dismemberments, Betty White as a
cantankerous old broad who may have murdered her husband, and a cow
hanging from a helicopter, and there you have it: Lake Placid.
(Curiously, this concoction was put together by David E. Kelley, better
known as the creator of TV's Ally McBeal and The
Practice.) --Bret Fetzer
