Review: ‘Birthday’ a mere cruise for Kidman

Geoff Carter

Friday, Feb. 1, 2002 | 9:39 a.m.

I want Nicole Kidman to clean Tom Cruise's clock but good. I know she can't rough him up -- ask any tabloid, he's got better lawyers -- but she can continue to make better movies, maybe pinch a few industry awards. I used to think she was the worst form of milquetoast, but after "Moulin Rouge" and "The Others" -- dual Golden Globe nominations, baby -- I've come around. She will take him, oh yes.

That's why I think her role in Jez Butterworth's flat and dull "Birthday Girl" isn't a career choice so much as an elaborate stunt on Kidman's part to lull the narcissistic dope into relaxing his guard. It's so slight and so boring that Cruise will say to himself, "Aha, she can't pick a decent script." A moment after that, he'll feel the quick-drying cement harden around his ankles.

It's not that "Birthday Girl" is bad -- it's just not. It dissipates as you watch. It's a comedy with no laughs, a thriller with no thrills, a character study with no characters -- just cartoons, similar to the big-headed caricatures you get at carnivals.

Ben Chaplin plays an uptight British bighead who orders a Russian bride; the bride, Nadia (Kidman), is a troubled bigheaded girl with a past; and Vincent Cassel and Mathieu Kassovitz play noisy bighead Russians.

Only Chaplin, a fine British actor ("The Truth About Cats and Dogs," "The Thin Red Line"), is speaking with his own accent, in his own language. Kidman, Cassel and Kassovitz do an admirable job of mimicking Slavic cadences ("Thees ees not a good plin"), but facts are facts: Kidman is Australian, and the other two are French and look it. You know something's up before anyone opens their mouths.

It only gets worse when they do talk. When all these caricatures are gathered in one room -- ostensibly to celebrate Nadia's birthday -- "Birthday Girl" looks, for all the world, like a comic strip. Every emotion is telegraphed, and every thought appears in a bubble over the actor's head.

When Chaplin's character is blackmailed by Nadia's "friends" -- actually a gang of con men, with Nadia the bait -- even he seems to have seen what was coming, and just rolls with it.

Kidman at least looks stunning, and even manages to muss with her image a bit: The two would-be newlyweds, unable at first to speak each other's language, bond through, er, bondage. I know at least 10 people, male and female, who would pay big money to see Nicole Kidman bound to a bed; averaged over the total population, that could mean a $15 million opening gross, at least, if the studio gets the word out. Miramax should've sent out postcards wrapped in brown paper.

And so Nicole baits Tom. Will he fall for it? Will he feel confident enough to make "Mission Impossible 3," believing that his ex-wife is sitting on her hands? Here's hoping.

"Birthday Girl" isn't a stumble; it's the equivalent of ramping up. And the next time we see Nicole Kidman, she'll be, in the words of one of her ex's most popular characters, going ballistic.