Gosh. Golly. What is it?
Take the sets from the Batman movie, let a comic book be your guide for dialogue, and cast Tim Robbins (what's not to like?) as your naive leading man; let Jennifer Jason Leigh do an imitation of young Kate Hepburn while using the body language of the young Barbara Stanwyck. What could be wrong with that? Oh, and add a very short Paul Newman (they should never let him stand next to Tim Robbins), "Yes, yes," he says, and flicks his major cigar, doing a passable Groucho.
Look, I loved the movies of the thirties and forties with Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper playing the honest (if simple) common man who wants to make good. It's a familiar plot -bring him to Town from Hicksville, pit him against the most cynical business world possible (this is sometimes a political scenario). Meet him up with the sharp-as-a-whip Career Woman (usually an undercover reporter out to get the Scoop). He realizes, too late,that he has told her his hopes and dreams with an open heart, and all the while she has been sticking the knife to him. She realizes, nearly too late, that she is in love; it rolls downhill, with delicious suspense, sometimes a full five minutes of conflict that seem like forever before the clinch and the closing credits roll.
It could have worked (it's worked before), but nobody here cared about the characters. The writer, the director - one assumes they conspired, the brothers Coen, as they have in the past. Who to blame? No matter. We are left with caricatures, badly presented and badly treated. The Tim Robbins character IS an imbecile; he has no original likability for us to return to; we do not know him and so we do not root for him. Tim Robbins' natural charm is inclined to buffoonery, and so he needs a script,and some (dare I say it?) direction). He can act, you just need to give him some clues. When one moment of true feeling, of human contact, occurs, it is because Jennifer Jason Leigh makes it happen, working against bad dialogue and somebody's misconceived Bryn Mawr accent. I like her, she keeps trying new things, but unfortunately, curiosity value does not a movie make.
I pay my dollar, I expect to be entertained. If this is a comedy, it isn't funny. If it is a return to "Mr. Deeds," there's no resemblance. You can't count on the audience's collective consciousness to provide EVERYTHING.
I liked "Fargo". I liked "Saving Arizona."
WHAT HAPPENED?
Take the sets from the Batman movie, let a comic book be your guide for dialogue, and cast Tim Robbins (what's not to like?) as your naive leading man; let Jennifer Jason Leigh do an imitation of young Kate Hepburn while using the body language of the young Barbara Stanwyck. What could be wrong with that? Oh, and add a very short Paul Newman (they should never let him stand next to Tim Robbins), "Yes, yes," he says, and flicks his major cigar, doing a passable Groucho.
Look, I loved the movies of the thirties and forties with Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper playing the honest (if simple) common man who wants to make good. It's a familiar plot -bring him to Town from Hicksville, pit him against the most cynical business world possible (this is sometimes a political scenario). Meet him up with the sharp-as-a-whip Career Woman (usually an undercover reporter out to get the Scoop). He realizes, too late,that he has told her his hopes and dreams with an open heart, and all the while she has been sticking the knife to him. She realizes, nearly too late, that she is in love; it rolls downhill, with delicious suspense, sometimes a full five minutes of conflict that seem like forever before the clinch and the closing credits roll.
It could have worked (it's worked before), but nobody here cared about the characters. The writer, the director - one assumes they conspired, the brothers Coen, as they have in the past. Who to blame? No matter. We are left with caricatures, badly presented and badly treated. The Tim Robbins character IS an imbecile; he has no original likability for us to return to; we do not know him and so we do not root for him. Tim Robbins' natural charm is inclined to buffoonery, and so he needs a script,and some (dare I say it?) direction). He can act, you just need to give him some clues. When one moment of true feeling, of human contact, occurs, it is because Jennifer Jason Leigh makes it happen, working against bad dialogue and somebody's misconceived Bryn Mawr accent. I like her, she keeps trying new things, but unfortunately, curiosity value does not a movie make.
I pay my dollar, I expect to be entertained. If this is a comedy, it isn't funny. If it is a return to "Mr. Deeds," there's no resemblance. You can't count on the audience's collective consciousness to provide EVERYTHING.
I liked "Fargo". I liked "Saving Arizona."
WHAT HAPPENED?