Thinner - 1996

 At the risk of not watching this for the maybe upcoming Stephen King season of Gourley and Rust, I did opt to rewatch Thinner now.

Thinner is one of those Stephen King books I believe I have read, who knows where, who knows when.  I saw this movie once, same deal, and promptly forgot it about it.  It's in the realm of the movies that I considered a "bad time", in the long long history of bad King adaptations.

Thinner stars Robert John Burke as lawyer Billy, who's married to his wife Heidi and who's weighing about 300 pounds.  His diet attempts are failing, especially after he gets off a criminal mafia guy played by Joe Mantegna.  After a congratulatory dinner, his wife is giving him road head and Billy is distracted and runs over a gypsy woman in his car.  Using his connections, Billy gets away with it, but soon the gypsy finds him and puts a curse on him in the form of a single word: "Thinner".

This movie is not scary, first of all.  It's barely even a thriller.  It's I guess a somewhat unsettling idea, sure, I guess.  But it's also so obviously dumb - I mean, a gypsy curse?  The movie knows that, it shows the characters disbelieving and dumbfounded by the prospect.  So anyways, the curse works and he begins to get thinner and thinner.  That's cool until it's not, and then he sets out to try to reverse it.

This movie is strangely paced straight out, and then furthermore it has some dodgy acting by most involved but especially the main actor.  His vengeance face is not at all good, and especially the hatred for his wife seems tacked on and underwritten.  

Not sure how Thinner works, but it's entertaining enough and has some minor interest.  It was a pretty much failure, and gets just above a 5 out of 10 online.  I'll give it like a 2.