Yeah, I'm sure you're expecting this to be a cinema classic, right?  Contrary to your expectations generated by the title, this is not a biography of John Tesh, but rather yet another version of The Invisible Man mixed in with a fantasy autobiography of director Paul Verhoeven, the guy who directed "Showgirls." Actually, it's not so bad. I went to see it with my kids, and we all kind of enjoyed it on a brainless summer blockbuster level, although a bad sign is that the kids thought it was kind of dumb. To them, Papa Smurf is like Stephen Hawking, so when they think something is dumb, it must really be obvious.

The plot is the usual mad scientist crap. The research is ready to test on humans, so the mad scientist decides to test it on himself. And he doesn't tell the congressional oversight committee that he is ready for that stage. Then he delivers such classic lines as "They say I'm mad, but I'll show them, I'll show them all. Mua-ha-ha-ha". Then the scientist/girlfriend says "Be afraid, be very afraid". Then they muse about what might have happened if he had used his genius for good instead of evil, and whether man is meant to challenge God.

You get the point. The usual horror cliches.

In the end the handsome good scientists triumph over the handsome evil scientist, and they escape the flaming underground bunker through an elevator shaft. The runaway elevator stops three inches from their heads, the dead mad scientist is not really dead yet ... thereby adding the usual action cliches to the horror cliches.

They did forget the thunderstorms and the ticking bomb that stops at 0:07, but I'm sure those will be in the sequel.

Amazingly enough, all the scientists in this film, good or bad, drive very expensive automobiles, live in luxury, and are uniformly handsome and buff, despite spending 22 hours per day with their test tubes. The leading scientist (Kevin Bacon) apparently has discovered the Fountain of Youth as well as the invisibility serum, because Professor Bacon looks about the same as he did in Animal House 30 years earlier. Anyway, the invisibility serum makes Bacon a for-real mad scientist, so he develops some deranged murderous impulses to go with his previous God complex - and he was already a big Freudian mess to begin with. Then the invisibility thing gives him absolute power, and he gets even crazier, and starts raping and killing and pillaging small Eastern European villages, and refusing to share his plunder with his fellow invisible freebooters.

So what's good about it if it has all those corny genre-film cliches?

I'll show you. I'll show you all, mua-ha-ha-ha.

(Actually, this isn't from this movie but is an actual quote from director Paul Verhoeven's life, when he was discussing his decision to make a gazillion dollar movie starring Elizabeth Berkley.)

Well, it isn't really good at all, now that I think about it. I mean you won't confuse it with "Henry V". But it does have Rhona Mitra and Kim Dickens showing their breasts. (Bacon slips off Dickens' blouse when she sleeps, and he peeks in on Mitra.) And it does have some absolutely great invisibility effects. The Apollo reviewer led with, "Hollow Man is a tragic waste of brilliantly realized visual effects". Berardinelli wrote , "(a) masterpiece of visual ingenuity sadly lacking in many other creative categories". That about sums it up. The best effect, by far, is the one with the bodies appearing and disappearing on the operating table as the visibility or invisibility potions take effect. Very cool stuff, just like those "visible man" things you can buy your kids to help them understand biology. Unfortunately, the filmmakers liked this device so much they repeated it about 1200 times, and I got the point after number 2. But it's must viewing if you have an anatomy final coming up.

Besides the f/x, I think the reason I liked it a little bit was the fast pace of the opening (which slowed considerably in the middle).

And the breasts, don't forget those.