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List Price: $9.98 | | Label: Republic Pictures
Salesrank: 18917
Released: August 14, 2001 |
| Our Price: $3.74 |
| Used Price: $3.47 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
When an obese small-town lawyer hits and kills a gypsy's daughter, the man curses him with one word: thinner.
Genre: Horror
Rating: R
Release Date: 1-MAY-2007
Media Type: DVD
Thinner Reviews:
Thinner by Stephen King 
2009-09-09 -
I am very happy with my movie. It was shipped and recieved very fast. THANK YOU
Thinner (1996)-Good Stephen King 
2009-07-03 - Thinner (1996) was a three to four star DVD with excellent special effects, a good story and fine performances. It was a little over the top which is nothing new for Stephen King. Over 7 sets of full body make up of one type or another were required to make the transition from 300 to 112 pounds look credible. A short on The Magic of Special Effects was also included documenting this work.
Thinner?Was It All Worth It In Some Way? 
2009-06-24 - Speaking from personal experience from being an extra (one who actually appeared prominantly) in King's TV production The Langoliers I had a first hand look into what goes into a Stephen King production in general.I was to have appeared in this film as an extra as well but circumstances simply didn't allow for it. Wheras I watched The Langoliers on TV and actually enjoyed it I just recently saw this movie.I'd always been curious about it and heard a lot of conflicting reviews of the film which didn't give the proper impression. So I finally saw it. Frankly.......it was a disappointing film.I've seen horror films before and most of them have some resolution in the end. While this one is unique in that it involves a very terrestrial curse rather then something supernatural. The problem is I was never really certain which of the central characters to route for.Billy Halleck,a lawyer presented in the beginning as having somewhat "questionable ethics" (itself a stereotype of the profession) may have been cursed by a gypsy for "killing" his daughter,being mildly distracted by his wife having given him "oral pleasure" in their car but at the same time some of the methods he uses to undo the curse,including an encounter with a mobster played by Joe Montenga,who was involved in a court case with Halleck as lawyer earlier in the film, become very selfish and sadistic.Not to mention that Robert John Burke portray's Billy Halleck as pompous and glutonous to an unbelievable degree. At certain points in the film it doesn't seem like his is really a life worth saving. Although the concept of bigotry against gypsies is covered to a certain point they are not portrayed as sympathetic characters either,but as nomad rougues looking for a fight. Not only that but another reviewer here is VERY correct:in terms of how Billy Hallecks misadventure takes him his wife,whose only crime seems to be trying to help him with his sudden weight loss it leads to a syndrome of misunderstanding,resentment and finally murder. There is an undercurrent of sexism behind it-a strong one. Kind of a letdown in a horror film where the storyline isn't supposed to take too much focus off the genre. But to avoid sounding too needlessly critical......this is just an okay movie as Stephen King movies go.And since he lives almost nextdoor to me,being from Bangor Maine myself I have some awareness of the New England culture and Stephen King certainly has done better examples of the New Englad horror "genre I guess then this.So only if your really curious is this worth looking into just to see it for yourself.
Okay
2009-04-01 - i thought the movie was cool, i hope i never make anyone that mad at me....
Journey to the Center of the Girth 
2009-02-05 - This one caught my eye while shopping around at local DVD retailer the other week and my interest was peaked. The premise of Thinner sounded very interesting to me, and the cover art (which deceivingly is not a picture of anything from the movie), looked pretty spiffy as well. I decided to watch.
Thinner tells the tale of Billy, an overweight dirtbag lawyer who just can't seem stick to his diet. A semi-solution to his problem comes one night after he plows down and kills an old gypsy woman in a car accident. His cop and judge buddies pull some strings and the death is ruled as accidental, getting him off the hook for his crime. The 106 year old gypsy king is not pleased with this, so he carries out his own style of justice in the form of a curse that rapidly melts the pounds away from Billy. The initial enthusiasm Billy has regarding his weight loss quickly fades into sheer panic as he begins withering away before his own eyes. He embarks on a mission to hunt down the gypsies and have the curse withdrawn, and get back at his unfaithful wife (Who sort caused the car accident while she and Billy were having naughty time).
Either Thinner is not that great movie, or the Stephen King tale it is based on was no gem to begin with. If you were expecting to witness the graphic deterioration of a body filled with intense emotional anguish like David Cronenberg's The Fly (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) for instance, boy did you come knocking at the wrong door. Thinner is mostly just a chronicle of an unlikable character who sheds a bit of latex from scene to scene until he finally just breaks down and begs to have the curse lifted. I think most will find that the plot is even thinner than Billy himself during the movie's final moments. The concept is a fairly straight forward one, I was only halfway through the movie before I started wondering how much longer they were going to drag this out.
Overall I'd say Thinner is another King book put to film that just doesn't quite take off. In fact, I would really recommend Thinner to no one other than a die hard Stephen King fan, (He makes a brief cameo as a pharmacist too). It's certainly an interesting idea for a story and the acting is decent, but it just doesn't work out very well as a movie and is ultimately forgettable.
