The Fractured Mirror entry: Wired (1989)
about 1 year ago
– Sun, Oct 22, 2023 at 07:47:06 AM
I'm not sure this comes through in the piece itself but I REALLY did not care for this motion picture.
I found it to be in questionable taste.
Wired (1989)
For many unknown actors getting cast as a legendary icon in a controversial biopic would be the break of a lifetime. For Michael Chiklis, playing John Belushi in 1989’s Wired was a disaster he was lucky to survive. In a rare, uncharacteristic fit of good judgment Hollywood turned its back on the seedy, sensationalistic and cruel feature-film adaptation of Bob Woodward’s money-grubbing best-seller for moral as well as creative reasons. Director Larry Peerce never directed another feature film. This was similarly screenwriter Earl Mac Rauch’s final credit. Yet Wired would have flopped even if the entirety of the film business was behind it. It’s not just as bad as its abysmal reputation suggests; it’s worse.
Wired at least deserves credit for being egregiously awful in a novel fashion. Rauch’s screenplay piles on pointless post-modern wankery with a tasteless framing device in which Belushi’s confused and horrified ghost is led through a surreal journey through his life by a cab-driving guardian angel played by Ray Sharkey.
Wired portrays its subject as a drug addict first and foremost, a fatal overdose second, a monster of id and ego third and a comic performer of rare ability and distinction a distant third. Wired depicts Belushi as someone whose adult life was one long drug binge littered with intermittent moments of comic greatness.
Wired never lets audiences forget for a moment that John Belushi was a drug addict who died young of a fatal drug overdose. The film is morbidly obsessed with the condition of Belushi’s corpse and the mechanics of injecting speedballs.
The rightly notorious, reviled biopic features recreations of Belushi’s performances on Saturday Night Live and Animal House that aren’t just unfunny: they’re anti-funny. The filmmakers don’t understand the comic mind, at all, yet they feel obligated to unsuccessfully attempt comedy all the same.
Wired's unfortunate existence is a giant glob of spit in the face of Belushi, Belushi’s memory and everyone who loved him because he was a comic genius and a great man and not the grotesque, hateful caricature of a junky he is here.
