Idle Hands

1999 "The touching story of a boy and his right hand."
6.2| 1h32m| R| en| More Info
Released: 30 April 1999 Released
Producted By: Columbia Pictures
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

Anton is a cheerful but exceedingly non-ambitious 17-year-old stoner who lives to stay buzzed, watch TV, and moon over Molly, the beautiful girl who lives next door. However, it turns out that the old cliché about idle hands being the devil's playground has a kernel of truth after all.

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Reviews

LouHomey From my favorite movies..
HottWwjdIam There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.
Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.
tbills2 I remember when I first saw Jessica Alba in this she lit my fire like a deep, eternal, undying flame that's still burning strong to this day! I love Jessica Alba. I love her in Into the Blue. She's like a freaking entrepreneur. I want to see her in movies again so badly. I love her in Mechanic: Resu- Jessica Alba's like my favorite actress! Stop making the world a safer place with your baby and beauty products you crazy honey and start making movies again! You're sooooooo hot, Jessica. Especially in Idle Hands. My hands are not idle when Jessica makes out with Devon on the bed in the beginning or when the beautifully dark-skinned angel, Jessica, dances in her Halloween costume then gets it torn off while tied to the roof of the car and drops down to thank Devon at the end. Jessica is so super hot and this is a really hot, cool, terrifyingly funny stoner movie that's so hater proof. People who hate on it fall right into the writer's trap just like you fell into my Alba-laced oozefest trap. Muahhahahahhahaaaa! Ingenious villain! Seth Green and that guy from The Butterfly Effect are really good. I love Vivica A. Fox, she's a fox, just like Kelly Monaco!(Idle Hands' ending kind of sucks, just like the intro scene.)
Leofwine_draca IDLE HANDS is a late-'90s comedy horror flick that comes across as a cross between the self-knowing humour of SCREAM and the bodily dismemberment of EVIL DEAD 2. Unsurprisingly it's nowhere near as good as either of those movies, although those with a penchant for '90s horror might get a chuckle or two from this one.The worst thing about this, for me, was the main characters, who are a trio of the usual slacker/stoner types that I don't think much of. Devon Sawa, of FINAL DESTINATION fame, was never much of an actor and he struggles to bring any charisma to the part here, although Seth Green is always reliable. The idea of having the two buddies helping him out seems to have been borrowed from Peter Jackson's superior THE FRIGHTENERS.The whole 'possessed hand' thing has been done before, and better, most notably by Bruce Campbell, so there's not a whole lot of entertainment value there. Still, there are plenty of splattery and gory moments which are handled nicely, and it's always amusing to see actors in pre-stardom roles (step forward, Jessica Alba). The final denouement is a bit silly but overall IDLE HANDS is an acceptable film for what it is, just not one I found particularly funny.
Scarecrow-88 Insane horror comedy is all go-for-broke nonsense, but its energy and stoner hi-jinx are often (or were to me, and obviously a cult audience that has accepted this into their fold; I can see fans of Pineapple Express enjoying this specifically) irresistible. The main "heroes" of the film have lives almost consistently devoted to weed and television. Anton (Devon Sawa, with an exhaustively physical performance) awakens to find his hand uncontrollably violent and always looking to kill...it is possessed by an evil that has been moving from lazy body to lazy body, waiting to take an innocent soul to hell. That plot alone will certainly leave a chunk of people cashing their chips, but with a pace which doesn't take a smoke break (although the stoners always look to take a smoke from any kind of bong pipe (whether it has tits or was built in auto shop class)), add enthusiasm in the performances, and remove any remote sense of pretension; Idle Hands could very well be an alternative on Halloween. Set during a long Halloween day for poor Sawa, he unfortunately has a psychotic hand that kills his parents (he doesn't even realize it!) and eventually his two best stoner friends, Pnub (Elden Henson) and Mick (Seth Green). Setting in motion the serious threat to anyone it comes across, eventually Anton severs the damned hand from his arm, but all that really does is allow the cursed body part to move freely. Meanwhile, the hand sets its sights on choosing the smokin' babe next door (Jessica Alba) as the victim to take to the "netherworld". Also Vivica A Fox shows up in the plot as a type of "spiritual warrior" with a dagger that will eliminate the hand if stabbed by her. She calls herself a "druidic high priestess" to a metal music loving gearhead (Jack Noseworthy) wanting to get into her pants; he also wants to get back his ford truck stolen by Anton so he (along with Pnub and Mick) can rescue Alba from the hand at a Halloween high school costume dance (with musical group The Offspring performing I Wanna Be Sedated, by the Ramones).Hectic is a word I'd apply to the plot shenanigans, as Sawa starts his day innocent enough: just trying to score some weed. Alba digs him; eventually, after Sawa somehow subdues the hand, Alba even makes out (having invited him into her room) with him! But after burying a broken beer bottle in the skull of Green, and sending a spiraling saw blade from the basement that decapitates Henson, such a make-out seems rather fitting to the whole crazy movie. I mean, the two dead pals decide to give Heaven a pass, returning to their corpses, re-animating with their same loose, chill personalities intact. This alone should let you know what kind of movie this is. One scene has Henson's body holding his head upside down while he weeds out with the smoke exiting the neck wound! Deciding to use duct tape, eventually Henson's head is "sort of" re-attached!Getting to see the lead singer of The Offspring "scalped", two incompetent cops sewing-needle stabbed and face-shocked by a taser, a hand being cooked in a microwave, and a poor cat hurled by its tale out of the window of a house all are indicative of the kind of madcap horror silliness you are in store for. If anything, the talking, decaying corpses of Sawa's friends quipping up a storm while he's frantically searching for a severed killer hand on the loose provide enough incentive to determine just how much absurdity in one movie you can stand. Evil Dead II is echoed here, no doubt. This was right before Sawa would participate in the beginning of the popular Final Destination franchise. Here, Sawa tirelessly moves about, really getting into his demanding role which asks him to be on the go almost from the get-go. Green and Henson's slackers will certainly appeal to a type of audience. Alba was right on the cusp of being a regular fixture in the fantasies of a masturbating generation...she is even in just bra and panties at one point. When Alba opens her house to a rather bloody Sawa, in just a robe and undergarments, I could just visualize the slobber of quite a few horny guys. Sawa's work making the hand seem alive before lopping it off (Green obliges his wound with a hot iron because "that's what friends are for") is spirited to say the least. The old school practical effects and some CGI as finesse are impressive; Green and Henson are quite a pair for such effects.
BA_Harrison Idle Hands stars Devon Sawa as teenage pot-head Anton, whose chilled lifestyle has made him the perfect host for a demon that—as druidic Priestess Debi LeCure (Vivica A. Fox) puts it—possesses the laziest f**k-up it can find. With his right hand under the demon's control, Anton is unknowingly responsible for a spate of murders in his local neighbourhood (including those of his own parents). After slaughtering fellow stoners Mick (Seth Green) and Pnub (Elden Henson), who come back as zombies having been too lazy to walk into the light, Anton finally realises that he is the killer and tries to end the problem by cutting off the demonic appendage. But his troubles have only just started, the severed hand going on a killing spree, its ultimate target: Molly (Jesica Alba), the girl of Anton's dreams.Idle Hands is probably my favourite 'possessed hand' movie (confession time: I prefer this film to Evil Dead II); it is also the funniest stoner horror/comedy that I have seen, although given that the only other examples I can recall are the Scary Movie series, that's not surprising. Not only does the film boast a very likable cast (and in the case of Alba, very lickable), but it also benefits from lots of well-executed splatter (including death by rotary saw blade, knitting needles, beer bottle, and ventilation fan), a sharp script that delivers plenty of laughs and quotable one-liners ("I needs me spinach"), an excellent rock soundtrack (punk band the Offspring even have a cameo, lead singer Dexter Holland having his scalp pulled off by the murderous hand), and an unforgettable finale that features a stoned hand-puppet and Jessica Alba in her underwear.