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Apt Pupil, from a Stephen King novella about an American teenager who discovers a Nazi war criminal living in his neighborhood, is another cautionary tale receiving mixed notices. Jay Carr in the Boston Globe writes that the film's "creepiness level ... escalates with malignant power until it's undermined by melodramatic contrivance and an overextended ending." Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times concludes that the film is "unworthy of its subject matter." Rick Groen in the Toronto Globe & Mail puns that "Apt Pupil just doesn't make the grade. ... The morality is muddled and the psychology lame." But Thelma Adams in the New York Post writes that it "offers a harsh vision of Middle America, where clean sidewalks, basketball games and two-car garages are no protection from the evil that lurks within." And Bob Strauss in the Los Angeles Daily News says that the film "shows us the very worst of the human soul" and gives some insight into how the holocaust happened and could happen again. |
