For decades, film reviewers have theorized of the existence of the so-called “Dark Actor,” an actor whose lack of talent is so dense that he or she can suck the enjoyment out of any given film. The existence of Dark Actors had been hypothesized long before Eisenstein proved their existence with his groundbreaking Grand Paulyfication Theory of 1948, wherein he predicted the existence of Mr. Shore some 40 years before BIO-DOME.

Eisenstein’s theory proved that, if the speed of the film is a constant, the on-screen talent acted upon the viewer’s enjoyment of it depending on which seat they were sitting in. If this were true, the director said, then there must be a much larger quantity of “suck” out there (known as “Dark Suck”) than anyone had previously believed, even after you account for Pia Zadora and Tom Arnold.

There have been a great number of contenders for Dark Actor status over the years: Stephen Baldwin, David Arquette, the entire Van Patten family... Malcolm McDowell was a candidate for a long time. But it’s that other MacDowell, Andie, who is justly garnering suspicion these days as a cinematic joy-suck. Her debut, GREYSTOKE: THE LEGEND OF TARZAN, should have been a dead giveaway. Her performance sucked so fiercely that the producers called in Glenn Close to dub MacDowell’s every line. And yet, her career persisted for decades, mostly by blending into the background of otherwise forgettable movies like ST. ELMO’S FIRE and GREEN CARD.

She struck gold by appearing in Steven Soderbergh’s SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE, although her character is largely indistinguishable from an Andie MacDowell-shaped cardboard cutout. From there, she forged a career from alternately being the weak link in otherwise good films to being the low-point in movies where taking that prize took considerable effort. Her mealy-mouthed “Gawdayum yew!” in SHORT CUTS proved unintentionally funny, while her supposed comedic role in HUDSON HAWK is about as funny as trench mouth.

“The Andie Effect” seems to vary from film to film, so can she truly be the elusive Dark Actor? To test this theory, I sat down to watch the universally reviled debacle TOWN AND COUNTRY to see if MacDowell could actually take a movie that was already bad and make it downright awful. To ensure the purity of the experiment, I had to establish a control group, so I tied my neighbor Larry to his recliner and taped his eyes open while a “Facts of Life” marathon was on TV Land.

The experiment started at 9:35 PM on the night of Tuesday the 3rd of May. The movie begins with the faint sound a middle-aged man attempting to scream through a ball-gag. I think. Pretty soon, Warren Beatty comes on screen and says that he’s got such a great life, great job, great marriage, great kids, and therefore he’s decided to sleep with Nastassja Kinski, which makes perfect sense to me. Warren is married to Diane Keaton, and they’re so rich and successful that, apart from receiving an award or appearing on magazine covers, they never actually have to do any work. Again, this makes perfect sense.

Diane and Warren are friends with fellow married couple Goldie Hawn and Garry Shandling, who don’t have jobs either. So naturally, Garry has sex with a transvestite hooker, an honest if unfortunate mistake. As I understand it, Ms. Kinski and transvestite hookers account for two thirds of all divorces these days. And the remaining third, believe it or not, stem from disputes over pudding.

Somehow, Goldie finds out about this infidelity, and kicks Garry out. Naturally, Diane does what any concerned wife would do, and has her husband accompany the scorned woman on a trip to her summer home, which never, ever leads to sex. Except all the time. Eventually, Diane catches up to her brain and kicks Warren out. Or so I assume. I had to duck out to administer some Visine to my control group, who was not at all grateful, and when I got back, Warren was sulking in a cabin in Idaho with Garry.

Which brings us to Andie’s big scene. She plays the daughter of another wealthy guy with no job, portrayed by Charlton Heston, who is married to a drunken, foul-mouthed paraplegic. In perhaps the creepiest scene this side of that footage of Michael Jackson dangling his kid from a window, Warren and the strangely childlike Andie imitate sexual acts using stuffed animals, only to be interrupted by Chuck, who has dibs on his daughter’s honor. Apparently in Idaho puppet coitus is legally binding, so Chuck plans a shotgun wedding.

So now, with the appearance of Andie, the film has gone from a half-assed Woody Allen rip-off to a full-on incest comedy. It’s hard to make the case that she’s ruined the film, but she has single-handedly (well, okay, with Chuck’s help) injected an extremely uncomfortable angle into the proceedings. The rest of the film careens around in goofy farce mode, but apparently if you drop Andie Mac into your cast, you take a hard left into Creepyville.

Results: Inconclusive. Is it really fair to blame this on Andie, or is it merely the director’s perverse whims projected onto his cast? And yet, the control group watched a completely MacDowell-less program and reported not one creepy incest plot, although it did report me to the police. This would seem to prove that Andie MacDowell caused some sort of quality distortion in this film. Absence of MacDowell = No creepy incest plot. Presence of MacDowell = Creepy incest plot. This may not prove that she is the elusive Dark Actor, but it does make a pretty convincing case for avoiding any future exposure.

From what I can tell, Larry seems to agree.

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