Schneider's 'Animal' Magnetism By Michael O'Sullivan Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 1, 2001

Colleen Haskell and Rob Schneider in "The Animal." (Frank Musi/Columbia Pictures)

Let's face it. Schneider, an affable homunculus with hair somewhere between a bad poodle-perm and a mullet, is no Mel Gibson. Still, he has a kind of Everyman likability and willingness to debase himself while keeping a straight face that makes his propensity for vulgar comedy somehow . . . charming. Plus, I can't help liking any guy who would leave a long message on my answering machine just because I kind of, sort of, halfway liked him in "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo": "Hey, man, this is Rob Schneider. I've got this new movie coming out called "The Animal" and I was wondering if you might, you know, be interested in talking to me. . . ." Can you imagine any other celebrity sitting by the phone running down the list of every critic who gave his last movie a nice review? (This is where the pity comes in.)

As Marvin Mange, a man put together with animal parts after a horrible car accident ("radical trans-species-ectomy" is "The Animal's" silly name for the even sillier procedure), Schneider gets to regurgitate worms to a baby turkey vulture, perform tricks like a Sea World seal, drink a tall glass of spackle-thick badger milk and mount a mailbox. Yes, that's the movie's recurring joke, as if you didn't already know this from the trailers: Marvin is an animal – actually several animals – as he discovers a newfound lack of impulse control (not to mention the ability to sniff out drugs hidden in an airplane passenger's, um, body cavity).

As disgusting as much of this sounds – and is – Schneider manages to make it all more palatable than nauseating, genial rather than an affront to good taste. It's also pretty darn funny, in a way you just know the same material wouldn't be in the hands of someone like, say, Tom Green. Just when you start to get sick of the shtick – okay, he's coughing up a hairball, I get it – he's onto another species (goat, dog, horse, you name it) and you find yourself chuckling despite yourself.

As Marvin's love interest Rianna, Colleen Haskell (yes, the one from the first cast of "Survivor") is perfectly fine, if an example of bald-faced stunt casting. Can she act? Well, not exactly, but she didn't really need to "act" for that Blistex commercial either: "Wow! Moisture like you've never felt before!"

The bottom line is that Haskell, cute as a button (no, make that a bucketful of buttons) does not embarrass herself. We'll leave that job to Schneider, and for that we are eternally grateful.

"The Animal" (PG-13, 84 minutes) – Contains comic violence and crude humor related to the excretory and sexual functions of the lower animals.