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braingrease
Reviews
Deep Rescue (2005)
Worst of the Worst
Move over "Battlefield Earth." Heave to, "Waterworld." I think IMDb needs to make a sequel to its own list: Son of the Bottom 100! And the only movie on the list is "Deep Rescue." I generally love the sci-fi action/adventure. It's possible that my appreciation for the genre makes me more critical than I should be, but this is a giant, space shuttle-shaped turd floating in the toilet bowl of film as we know it.
The script seems to be a race to see how many clichés each character can jam in per shot. The acting/directing looks like they all flunked out of the William Shatner School of Dramatic Emphasis. The most shameful mess was how often the story ripped off other considerably more brilliant deep sea crisis flicks, particularly "The Abyss." It was such a flagrant steal that I expected pretty little water aliens to appear when the romantic leads get stuck in a collapsing DSRV. I imagine the creatures would be queued in right after the couple promises to survive for one another and hang on no matter what even though they fought non-stop for the first 100 minutes of the movie just like Bud and Lindsay. But with an obviously limited special effects budget, someone's nephew would have had to draw the little space angels on overhead transparency and wiggle them around behind a fish tank. Maybe they couldn't even afford a 4th grader, particularly if he was working for scale.
I won't say that "Deep Rescue" is as bad as the 2005 rehash of "Pride and Prejudice," because P&P was actually trying to be literary. But this pretty bloody terrible. I'd love to see MST3k revived just for this monstrosity.
The Bostonians (1984)
Abysmal on all counts
With an uncompromising dedication to character, and a flair for graceful, richly-textured storytelling, Merchant-Ivory seemed incapable of mediocrity. And with the recent passing of Ismail Merchant, I've been thumbing through the company's stellar filmography with renewed appreciation. Adoring the costume drama, I donned my comfy slippers and International Coffee and settled into 120 minutes of Merchant-Ivory bliss.
What I got instead was The Bostonians, the MI treatment of Henry James' witty and satirical novel about the earliest days of the feminist movement. This production took a fun and biting social commentary and turned it into gooey melodrama. It failed to show the irony of a headstrong young feminist (daughter of a "mesmeric healer" and a chronic hypochondriac) allowing herself to be manipulated on all sides while falling for a dull, misogynistic Southern lawyer. It turned the classic Plutonic relationship with her feminist mentor into the clawing desperation of an aging lesbian. Script appeal seesawed between eating a mouthful of alum, and blowing butterscotch pudding out one's nose. Editing was at once jagged and lumpy, spending copious amounts of film on innocuous bits of business, only to slam the guillotine so close to some dialog that it made me wonder about my DVD player. And that's only the half of it.
Stiff and lumbering is all I ever expect of the now canonized Christopher Reeve, so this performance shouldn't have surprised me. But it did. Reeve was channeling some kind of Confederate Heathcliff with a little Mary Shelley thrown in for good measure. Reading his lines from crib notes apparently taped to the bottom of the camera lens, he never blinked nor gave the slightest indication of understanding his dialog. He seemed to be forever walking downhill, and was patently incapable of moving his head. On seeing this performance, one could almost believe that the future riding accident might actually improve his flexibility. The heroin, as played by a mush-mouthed Madeleine Potter, showed all the plucky conviction of a plate of cold baked beans (yes, with the little puddles of congealed pork fat floating on top). As for the usually magnificent Vanessa Redgrave (in the desperate aging lesbian role), I say 'let's just forget this ever happened.' The only redeeming performances were two tiny bits sent in by Linda Hunt and Jessica Tandy. I'd be surprised if their scripts totaled more than 150 words. It would seem the director didn't bother to load their bloomers with the 100 lbs of wet oatmeal like he did with everyone else.
In a way, it's a shame I only rented The Bostonians. I'll miss out on the gratification I'd have felt in putting it in the microwave. What a tragic waste of good couch time.
Pride & Prejudice (2005)
Should we rejoice at the inferiority of this rendition?
For the sake of starting with something positive, let's throw out the very biggest problems like historical placement and accuracy. If we can get stupid enough to ignore a boat load of adaptation problems, we might at least admit that this movie was beautifully designed and very well shot. Watch this monstrosity with the sound off, and you'll enjoy some remarkable cinematography.
But no lavish castles or livid sunrises can rescue such a mess.
First, we'd have to cut off the head of the beast in terms of raw materials and leadership. The screenplay borders on jabberwocky, honoring only the most banal of Austen's dialog. And despite being the consummate romance, director Joe Wright isn't able to coax anything more than a lukewarm shrug from any of the key players.
Speaking of key players, let's look at casting.
Keira Knightley (Pirates of the Caribbean, King Arthur) reduces the smart and self-possessed Elizabeth to little more than teen petulance. She strides triumphant through the movie, always armed with some well worn leather-bound tome (we can safely assume it's not Stanislavski), looking for ways to disarm people with her aplomb. Unfortunately, Knightley has a limited number of tools with which to construct the facade. One is a frightening and toothsome grin-laugh thing that turns her into a Rankin/Bass villain (a'la Burgermeister, the Bumble, HeatMiser, etc). The rest of the time, Knightley relies on her jutting jaw and droopy lip to illicit a blatant sexuality (which happens to be completely wrong for this character). However, instead of the intended pouty sex kitten allure, she looks as if a large dose of Thorazine is just kicking in. We half expect a ribbon of drool to escape down her chin at any moment.
Then there is our darling Darcy. No one will ever touch the haughty torment of Colin Firth. Even if we hadn't seen Firth's Darcy, Macfadyen would seem a bit flat. We get precious little of his prickly pride (which is fairly significant to the story, being in the title and all). His too-soft underbelly is exposed the minute he sets eyes on Elizabeth, which irrevocably breaks the seal on his crusty credibility. The most powerful aspect of this romance (in the book & BBC version) is how it so utterly surprises Elizabeth - and us - when he makes that first proposal. Watching Macfadyen spill the beans in his first 10 seconds on screen leaves very little reason to keep watching. He could have benefited from just a bit of Caroline Bingley's over-the-top nastiness.
As for the rest of the cast, they come in two flavors: shallow and boring, or giggly and squirming like cheerleaders in the back of the bus. One has to wonder if it took more than Thorazine to get the rest of the cast through this project, particularly after seeing Donald Sutherland's version of Mr. Bennett. Dreamy and completely disconnected, laudanum appears to be his buffer of choice. Of course we expect Lydia and Kitty to be a bit silly, which they are, but they both seem to be in the throes of a bad Ecstasy binge. Their squealing and twittering is relentless and positively manic. And poor Mr. Collins (actor Tom Hollander, who also plays the deliciously neurotic and ruined Anthony Meredith in Gosford Park) appears to be stoned out of his head and on the brink of full-on paranoia, although trying very ...hard ...not to be. He was definitely capable of giving David Bamber (the A&E Collins) a run for his money in this role. Unfortunately, "big eyes and stick-up-the-arse marionette movement" must have been Wright's direction for the unfortunate Hollander.
Countless smaller irritations abound: The evil Mr. Wickham has roughly 9 words of dialog with which to make us first adore and then despise him (a fancy trick for any actor, let alone someone with no noticeable screen time). Dame Judy Dench is sadly overcast as the fiery old crone, Lady Catherine de Bourg, which is exactly the same as every other role she's been saddled with for the last 10 years. What a tragic waste. And she brought almost too much credibility to the trivial Lady Catherine. Even Charles Bingley's sunny disposition seems to be drawn in crayon. Far from the agreeable innocent we all adore, he comes off as weak and mildly retarded and seemingly incapable of combing his particularly unruly shock of ginger hair. The result is some kind of love child of Liberace and Howdy Doody. Darcy would have never befriended someone like this, and not just because of the hair. Brenda Blethyn (Little Voice, Saving Grace) turns in the only enjoyable performance as the terminally squirrelly Mrs. Bennett. At least she's fun to watch, albeit in the manner of a fuzzy rodent with a firecracker tied to her tail. But she occasionally lacked conviction in terms of her chronic "nervous condition."
When will Hollywood learn that unless you bleed every 28 days or are named Ang Lee, you're not qualified to handle Jane Austen? Go tackle the Brontes. And there must be at least a half dozen more gladiator movies waiting to be made or remade. Heck, take Dickens on another spin around the dance floor! But leave the next Austen adaptation to the BBC, A&E, or Masterpiece Theatre where they might still care more about characters and story than honoring a 5-picture deal for the latest tarted-up teen stars.