J-Lo Sentences You to...The Cell!

The Booty is the gateway to the Mind!

The Cell (2000)
Directed by Tarsem Singh
Written by Mark Protosevich

Tagline: "This summer... enter the mind of a killer."

And as an added bonus, enter the mind of a Jennifer Lopez!  As you might imagine, it’s full of expensive, bizarre clothes, MTV videos, and a violent man in trouble with the law. Plus, lots of derriere jokes!

The Dreamscape/In Dreams/What Dreams May Come part our movie begins with Jennifer of Arabia riding her horse across the sands while wearing a feathered wedding gown she apparently borrowed from Harvey Birdman, Attorney-at-Law. See, Jennifer is a child psychologist thingy who, through the marvels of unexplained science, can enter the mind of her patient, a catatonic kid who hates water. Her therapy sessions consist of her donning a red rubber cat suit (ribbed for our pleasure), getting hooked up to a Playskool My First Matrix machine, then invading the boy’s subconscious to urge him to Just Say No to schizophrenia.

Jennifer, a highly trained mental health professional, says earnestly, "He’s living in a world that’s not healthy," and wants to reverse the polarity on the mind-melding device, which, as we know from Ghostbusters, is highly dangerous. Her scientist colleagues shoot down the idea, so Jen goes home and smokes pot in her underwear, while generously shoving her butt at the camera. The scientific community's argument is now invalid.

Meanwhile, in the Silence of the Lambs/Seven/Swingers portion of our movie, FBI agent Vince Vaughn, looking like he’s suffering from a serious case of cotton-mouth and dope lag, is trying to locate an appropriately bizarre serial killer to spice up the movie. Vince just got his big break in the case: a dog hair, which DMV records indicate belongs to Vincent D’Onofrio. But just seconds before Vince breaks down the door, D’Onofrio takes a bath, which causes him to have a seizure, rendering him catatonic. 

Even worse, Bad Vince grabbed a new victim while Good Vince was waiting in line at the DMV, and since the girl is trapped in Bad Vince’s automated aquarium, she will drown within a few hours. To add suspense to the movie, why don’t you hold your breath until the girl is located? (Full disclosure: We tried this and passed out several times, but feel that our ability to appreciate the director’s singular vision was only enhanced by the hypoxia and serial concussions.)

Vince takes Bad Vince to a specialist in bath-tub related disorders, who says that he is suffering from a rare form of schizophrenia triggered by a trauma involving Mr. Bubble....exactly like the kid in the first part of the movie! I mean what are the odds? The doc explains that drugs can’t help and the catatonia is permanent, so it looks like the girl is doomed.

Vince asks Jennifer if she can get the girl’s location from the mind of the killer. She wrinkles her brow, looks puzzled, and in her best Melanie Griffith voice states, "For severe schizophrenics there's no difference between fantasy and reality." Yup, Jen is one of the nation’s most gifted psychologists—and probably attended the same institute of higher education as Dr. Christmas Jones, the 22-year-old world-renowned nuclear physicist/underwear model in The World is Not Enough.

And that brings up a very important question: what would Jennifer’s Bond Girl name be? We lean toward "Professor Bébé Gottbach, Ph.D.", but feel free to come up with your own.

Anyway, Jennifer enters Bad Vince’s head, sees a boy, and follows him to a barn. He pushes her away from a horse just as panes of glass fall from the ceiling, sectioning the animal into a science project ("the living horse”) or into steak for the Outback restaurant chain. This symbolizes the damage done to D’Onofrio’s young psyche by the theme song from Mr. Ed.

Suddenly, she encounters a king wearing a purple cape that extends for miles.  Jennifer is horrified, because the cape makes his butt look really big, and her contract contains an ironclad No Compete clause. She signals to her colleagues that she wants out of Bad Vince’s twisted mind now!

Good Vince asks her to go back, since she didn’t come up with any useful information except that Bad Vince—in the tradition of movie serial killers like Leatherface, and Buffalo Bill—murdered King Friday and is wearing his skin.

For Dr. Jennifer’s encore appearance in Bad Vince’s mind, the director, remembering his acclaimed "Losing My Religion" video, has D’Onofrio dress like a demon (you know, Clown White greasepaint, two pigtails dangling from his forehead, and a pair of brass rings piercing his nipples, which I bet his wife is going to be irritated about when she goes to wash her hair and notices the shower curtain is sagging).  Then Bad Vince licks Jen, which suddenly convinces her that his world is reality, just like the foreshadowing said would happen! The scientists are powerless to help her because turning off the equipment now would cause them to lose their Legend of Zelda game.  But Vince remembers the third rubber cat suit, and prepares to barge into D’Onofrio’s subconscious too. The scientists advise him that the way to snap Jennifer back is to "Hit her with something personal," like Mr. Blackwell’s Worst Dressed list.

Vince sees a rainbow of fruit colors, eats some Skittles, and then encounters Jennifer, now wearing a skimpy black lace outfit, orthodontic headgear, and Queen Amidala’s hair. She smiles cruelly as D’Onofrio pokes a hole in Vince’s tummy and pulls out his intestines, using a Ronco device made just for that purpose ("And boy, does it catch intestines!"). Vince remembers the scientists’ recommendation and confronts Jen with something painful from her past. "You were in Anaconda!" he yells, and the shame frees her—unfortunately, to go on and make Gigli.

“You’d tell me if I looked stupid, right?”

Vince spots the logos on the machinery holding Bad Vince’s mind together and deduces where the girl is being held.  So, with Jennifer rescued and the case solved, his work here is done. However, Jen knows there are more cool outfits for her to wear, so she locks the doors to the lab, reverses the polarity on the machine, and joins minds with Bad Vince again.

This time she finds herself dressed as a nun playing Santa Claus in an Obsession ad. She beatifically tells the boy that she came back to help him like she promised. Then D’Onofrio appears, now made-up like Dirk Benedict in Sssssss. Jennifer changes into a black leather cat suit and black lipstick and wails on Bad Vince while shouting the diva’s traditional battle cry: "My world, my rules!" And her chief rule is: nobody upstages me and lives!  

She stabs D’Onofrio repeatedly, but he merely smiles, demonstrating that even in her own mind Jennifer is an amazing feeb. So she changes back into the nun outfit and drowns the boy, which is shocking, unless you went to Catholic school.

It’s several days later. Vince, more lethargic and hungover than ever, is at D’Onofrio's house, looking for loose change. Jennifer shows up, looking for closure. Vince tells Jennifer he remembers only pieces of his experience with her, and says something about a "drug-fueled mind-bender," which I assume is his suggestion for an appropriate cast party theme. They half-heartedly say thanks and good-bye. Jen goes back to the Vogue shoot in her young patient’s mind, while Vince returns to FBI Headquarters to file his report and smoke a bowl of Super Lemon Haze with Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.  Finis.