"Even your most meanspirited sociopath doesn't want to go to prison or jail, " he said, adding, " Now you're going to find that people who had no standing in my patients'lives, strangers, will feel free to make themselves morally superior at the expense of my patients'liberty and well-being ."
42.
But instead of dealing with the big issues, she adopts a meanspirited satirical tone that makes all the townies look like Bubbas and boobies . ( One prototypical boobie is even named Bubba . ) The only characters who don't come off too badly ( and that includes the sour, paranoid Hammer ) are a sadistic young criminal called Smoke and the teen-age misfit known as Weed whom he torments.
43.
Carrying a film of Columbus'means three things : mastering the director's patented scream take ( think of Edvard Munch, then of Macaulay Culkin in " Home Alone " ); summoning half-real emotion in totally false surroundings ( the film maker's preferred setting is a materialist fairyland, ideally at Christmas time ), and lending comic buoyancy to a story idea that's actually rather meanspirited without the antic acting and nutty pratfalls.
