The Substance (#601)


I don't know how or why you can destroy a film that had a unique premise, reasonable acting, great cinematography and special effects and other good things to make it unusual and watchable in the last twenty minutes, but it was achieved in THE SUBSTANCE by its French writer/director.  Critics raved, calling it a marvelous Hollywood satire.  The last twenty minutes made it gross, grotesque, violent, bloody and absurd.  Demi Moore, whom I don't recall seeing in ages, did a good job as a highly successful and beautiful model and movie celebrity, with a star on the Hollywood walk of fame, who is fired from her network fitness show because she's too old (a la Jane Fonda?).  The man who fires her and demands a younger, prettier version to succeed her is a manic and funny Dennis Quaid named Harvey (a caricature of Harvey Weinstein?).  
A mysterious and anonymous voice advises Demi that she is able to create a replacement for herself with one injection. Said injection will allow her to be two people and she must change from one to the other every week.  In her incredibly huge and lush apartment, we watch as her supine back splits open and the new her appears as she lay unconscious or worse.  There are lots of requirements to make the exchanges, like transfusions of some kind and other medical requirements and all goes well until her new self doesn't want to change places, and while the new person goes on to bigger and better things, Demi gets older and more grotesque.  And then the last twenty minutes!!!!  There is a lot of nudity (Demi looks good in and out of clothes) and too much blood and grossness at the end, and there are many scenes of what I would term T and A moments.  T&A is a reference to a song from the highly successful Broadway show "A Chorus Line," in which one of the female dancers sings comically about her transformation "Tits and Ass".  Sorry. there's no other way to describe it.  89% of critics and 70% of audiences gave it a thumbs up.  I limit my approval to the first two hours of the 2 hour and 20 minute film.

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