Adapting Stephen King isn't always easy. There are folks that have done it well and others that have really done a horrible job. Few folks get multiple chances, but one of them is Tom Holland (Fright Night, Child's Play, Psycho 2), who made this and The Langoliers.Unlike most movies, there is not a single person that you'll truly like or get behind here. It's a mean-spirited tale about some mean-spirited people. It's a lot like life, I guess. And yes, I realize that this is a Richard Bachman book, but just about everyone knows that that is really King by now (see our review of The Running Man for more).Billy Halleck (Robert John Burke, who took over the role of RoboCop in the third installment) plays a corpulent lawyer who defends just about anyone, including Richie "The Hammer" Ginelli (Joe Mantegna, Joey Zaza himself). There's a ton of practical appliance makeup here to transform Burke into the various stages of Halleck's weight loss.After celebrating getting the mobster acquitted in his case, he rides home with his wife Heidi (Lucinda Jenney, The Mothman Prophecies). She chides him for eating so much and says that he should be obsessed with better things, like sex. As she goes down on him while he drives, he slams directly into an elderly gypsy woman.Billy knows how to play the system, with the police lying on the stand for him and Judge Rossington taking care of his case. Long story short, he isn't punished.As he leaves the courtroom, the 106-year-old gypsy patriarch, Tadzu Lempke (Michael Constantine, who also played Windex-loving Kostas "Gus" Portokalos in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which is kind of ironic) touches his face and says, "Thinner." Soon, he's losing so much weight that he needs all new clothes.Fearing he has cancer, his wife sends him to Dr. Houston. Billy hates Houston, as he's convinced his wife is having an affair with him. They - and a later clinic - can find no scientific reason why he's losing the weight.He's not the only one dealing with a curse. Judge Cary was cursed with the word "lizard" and he's now turning into one. And the police chief who lied on the stand is becoming a leper.Billy tries to get the gypsies to remove his curse, but they only increase it. And Galina (Kari Wuhrer from TV's Remote Control), Lempke's great-granddaughter, shoots him through the hand with a slingshot. He vows that he will bring the white man's curse down on all of them.This instigates a war between the mob forces that Billy has defended and the gypsies, with dogs poisoned, men killed, fake acid thrown in faces, kidnappings and more.Yet Billy can barely even walk, as the curse has reached its final stages. In an attempt to end the violence, Lempke agrees to remove it and mixes Billy's blood into a strawberry pie that he must get someone else to eat, as the curse must be transferred. Billy takes the pie to his wife, who eats a slice and dies a husk of a person. But he ignored the old man's warnings, as he wanted Billy to just eat it himself so he could die clean. Now, Billy's daughter has also had some, so he's doomed her. But at least he gets to take out the doctor he hates by offering him a slice.This is a quick moving, down and dirty film. It's a perfect Sunday afternoon cable film - do people still do that? I do.

This isn't a terrible movie, it's just not that good either. Decidedly average with a ridiculous premise, corny dialogue and some below par acting.The lead actor is the worst culprit. No offence to the guy but he's not leading man material. The special effects designed to make him look obese are very dated and just make him look unrealistic and almost like a cartoon character. The other characters are complete clichés, from the evil gypsies with magic in their veins to a psychotic Mob boss.This would have worked better as a 30 minute Tales From The Crypt episode. It's not interesting enough or good enough for a movie.

This engaging adaptation of the novel, which Stephen King wrote under his Richard Bachman pseudonym, stars the under rated Robert John Burke as Billy Halleck. Billy is a lawyer in Maine who happens to be grossly overweight. After he accidentally runs down an elderly Gypsy woman, his judge (John Horton) and cop (Daniel von Bargen) friends conspire to help Billy avoid any punishment. This infuriates the old womans' even more ancient father (Michael Constantine, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"), who places one of those old fashioned Gypsy curses on Billy. Stroking Billy's cheek, he utters one word: "Thinner". Soon, Billy is rapidly losing weight, which he enjoys at first, until he realizes that he really is going to waste away to nothing unless something is done.Just personally speaking, this viewer has a blast with this particular King story. Yes, it's unrelentingly downbeat, but he didn't mind that so much. And it's true: other than Billy's daughter Linda (Bethany Joy Lenz), there isn't a single character in the story who's remotely sympathetic. Still, this viewer found it refreshing that so many people here turn out to be such a-holes. It's a highly entertaining tale, well told by co-screenwriter and director Tom Holland ("Fright Night", "Child's Play"). And it's fortunately not completely without a sense of humor, although the humor tends towards the dark.There's wonderful music by Daniel Licht, but the real marvel of the movie is the astonishing, convincing makeup effects (supervised by Oscar winner Greg Cannom) that transform the thin Burke into an obese man. There's also a gem of a supporting performance by the always entertaining Joe Mantegna as a mafia man whom Billy had successfully defended in court. Therefore, the mobster feels indebted to the lawyer, and is more than willing to help Billy in his quest to convince the ancient Gypsy to remove the curse. The supporting cast is solid right down the line, with Lucinda Jenney as Billy's possibly unfaithful wife (the script tries to leave this aspect as ambiguous as possible), Sam Freed as a doctor friend, the intoxicatingly sexy Kari Wuhrer as Constantines' great granddaughter, Elizabeth Franz in a bravura turn as Hortons' wife, and Peter Maloney as an information provider. Director Hollands' son Josh plays Frank Spurton; King has his usual cameo (playing a pharmacist). What is a real laugh is the fact that actress Irma St. Paule, as the accident victim, actually looks OLDER than Constantine!Good gloomy fun, but it won't be to all "tastes", especially the ending.Eight out of 10.

Managing to get off on a murder charge, a lawyer suddenly learns his weight-loss is the result of a curse placed on him by the gypsy he helped to screw over and tries to find a way of ending it before it consumes his world.This here really wasn't all that great and had a lot wrong with it. The main thing against this is in fact the central premise, as this one takes up the idea that what's going on here is scary when it really isn't as the concept of a curse causing an obsess person to drop off weight no matter what he does. This is simply not a scary proposition at all, and to make this be the root cause of fear in a ninety-minute movie is simply ridiculous by forcing this one to become completely dependent on such lame scenes as the arguing with the family over first losing weight and then how much he's lost as quickly as he is, the different tests and methods being done to try and figure out what's going on and the behavioral change in going from loving his new look to from all the compliments to being terrified of how much he's going to shrink next, and none of this makes the film any better at what's going on here as this one manages to become deadly boring here with this one concentrating on these issues for such a large majority of time here that it's not so interesting as the main point of the story here. Even the supposed adultery subplot here is just excruciatingly dull with absolutely nothing of any interest happening here and just making this one feel like forever before it really gets to anything decent or interesting and this manages to fulfill the fact that doing this makes for an enjoyable time here. The far more interesting and creative scenes apply to his cronies which actually feature the opportunity for scares and other chilling moments as they're damaging to the body which would've been a lot more fun rather than watching him run around the countryside chasing after the group. These here really bring this one down while it does have a few decent moments along the way. The biggest factor going here is the rather enjoyable final half, which not only gets the really enjoyable but also has some solid action within the mafia assaults on the gypsy camp set-off by the early ambushes before the decent shootout to be found here that certainly sets this going rather well. The only other part that comes off nicely is the whole concept of the curse and what it does, as the method for this one coming into fruition is nice enough and all the different rules and rituals for this are rather nicely explored. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot that works.Rated R: Adult Language and Violence.