The Last Supper
Cameron Diaz, Ron Eldard, Courtney B. Vance
Charles Durning, Jason Alexander, Ron Perlman
Directed by Stacy Title
Sony Pictures 1996
94 minutes
Any movie that kills off Jason Alexander less than five minutes after his appearance on screen can’t be all that bad. The Last Supper is a neat black comedy starring Cameron Diaz and Courtney B. Vance of Law and Order fame. This is not a classic but it is entertaining fare.
Five liberals and graduate students have supper together every weekend. One weekend they invite a redneck trucker who rails that liberals so nothing but bitch about things and never do something about it. When they kill him, the five friends discover they have done something about it and set out to improve the world one person at a time.
This includes a priest who believes AIDS is the cure for gays (Charles Durning), a guy who thinks when a woman says no she really means yes (Mark Harmon), a right to lifer, a fan of Farrakhan, and so on. Jason Alexander plays an anti-earth kind of guy who doesn’t believe in things like global warming -or for conservatives, climate change. He also gets his just deserts.
You can’t think too hard while watching The Last Supper as the bodies stack up in the backyard pretty quickly. Part of what makes this a dark comedy is the effect these murders have on the five liberals: increased creativity, libido, stewed tomatoes, and so on.
Meanwhile, the cops are looking for a missing girl. It takes a while for the two stories to connect and you do wonder how that will happen.
The reason why the friends start getting second thoughts is quite original and adds to the dark comedy. When the wheels fall off, they really fall off.
The final twist takes a bit of a while to set itself up but it is pretty funny nonetheless.
I got my copy of The Last Supper in a bargain bin for the price of a rental. A good deal.
