Aside from the presence of the badass dyspeptic one, Mutants has less than zero going for it. Plot-wise, I suppose the old 'evil sugar company' trying to turn the beloved sweetener into something "more addictive than cocaine and caffeine combined" can be forgiven. Of course those business-crazy knuckleheads keep getting the formula wrong as they test it on human abductees. The lucky ones turn into zombie-type 'mutants' prone to leaping out of their hiding places, only to be quickly dispatched by lackluster gunfire. And so it goes, for 90 muddled, agony-inducing minutes, until in a rage you run out onto the street, pouring pure cane goodness into your neighbor's gas tanks.

Seriously, I'm recommending an evening of petty crime as an alternative to watching this mess. Confusingly laid-out, overly talky, bereft of real action, tension or scares, Mutants gets everything wrong. We begin with a frantic video conference call between Ironside and some dude who looks like Al Franken. As 'Al' lays it out, Ironside begins what will be a perpetual series of random names tossed about to make the film seem serious: like "Duncan and Spencer have already mobilized, Thompson, Shylock and Burns will like it, as Gordon has taken over ArcoTech with Jones, Symington, Whitlock, Sturgeon and Norris ... wait, what was I talking about?" Then we travel through a series of lateral flashbacks that mutilate all continuity. More names are blurted, new characters lacking any background are thrown into the mix every five minutes, with few of them registering any impact. Our nominal protagonist in a sea of faceless dorks is a hapless secretary who looks like a weird cross between Helen Hunt, Bonnie Hunt, and Holly Hunter. Her performance is one half-click above amateur, which is more than can be said for everyone besides 'Franken' and Ironside.

In Mutants' messed-up, untraceable space-time continuum, all scenes seem designed to invoke severe ennui by emphasizing and prolonging meaningless activity. Guys sit in office chairs; the shot is held too long. An unknown spy takes multiple photos of someone doing nothing. A character discovers something about which the audience is not privy. She runs about, trying to crank up baseless tension, then something else happens as a result of the mysterious thing, but we don't know what that other thing is either. Then they show us five minutes of a freeway or something. The evil scientist has a really bad, fake Russian accent. He works in a shack. Finally we're treated to a student-film-quality shoot-out (grade school student) in the old mill. In extreme long shot, a 'mutant' springs up from behind a pile of tires and is shot instantly. Repeat five times. Then, we go back to 'Al Franken' on the videophone, leading us to wonder whether everything we've seen has been a flashback, or if it hasn't even happened yet. The best thing about Mutants is a quick shot of an enraged mutant violently gnawing on a stalk of sugarcane. But in case you don't get it, this is not a bad movie that's fun to watch: as my wife says, "this is the movie they're talking about when they say 'that's 90 minutes of my life I'm not getting back.'"

The DVD

Video:
Our screener comes in 1.85:1 ratio for widescreen televisions. It appears to be factory made, but I'll bestow the benefit of the doubt and say this screener may not reflect final product. For what it's worth, the picture is quite grainy (probably a mix of film grain and digital noise) and suffers from frequent motion blur. Lighting is atrocious; it often appears as if only ambient lighting (like fluorescents in an office for instance) was used, with no effort made for color timing. Some scenes look horribly washed out or yellowish, some benefit from being shot outdoors, with fairly natural colors. Some scenes go from decent looking to all weird, bland and greenish with no discernable reason. It's a startling dynamic that will have you wondering if your TV is breaking down. Yeah, that's what I want from a DVD.

Sound:
No indication is given on the screener as to audio processing. We'll call it Digital Stereo and say it's no good anyway. Poorly recorded, ADR will take you right out of the action, as it sounds like someone suddenly beams his or her voice in from a nearby spaceship. Otherwise, music is often a little too loud for the dialog, and overall sound is just not good.

Extras:
No extras were included on this screener.

Final Thoughts:
Mutants plumbs new depths of ineptitude in the DTDVD market. It's clumsily, confusingly assembled, poorly acted, has really low production values, is way too talky, none of the blather on hand amounts to much more than spouting tons of random names and vaguely militaristic catch-phrases, and the little action on hand is tepid. It's not a joke, it's just bad, except for the fact that it has Michael Ironside, a genre actor who is easy to love. Plus, the DVD cover shown above has absolutely nothing to do with the movie whatsoever, so please don't use that as any sort of indication. Oh yeah, Skip It.

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