Winners and Losers, Bulls and Clowns

tedg

Spoilers herein

The losers are only a few: the writer and Daryl Hannah. Daryl because she should be working at more challenging parts right now. Regarding the script, you can smell a Redford a mile away: cloying sentimentality, mechanical plot evolution, subconscious conflation of nature with goodness and freedom. This script is really bad: one can see the remnants of the formula: switching lovers mirrored by switching destinies. The curse of emotionally jailed parents. The challenge. The balance of victory and defeat. The nature-specific enlightenment at the end. Please advise this kid to go into another line or to radically reinvent himself.

The winners are enough to keep this from being a waste. Most of the actors are strong enough to put something where the writer did not. Postlethwaite has one real scene and is memorable. Really. Sutherland and Dillon show they are better than the material. But the one that fascinates me is Molly Ringwald.

She debuted in a quirky, actorly adaptation of `the Tempest' with Susan Sarandon and Raul Julia. She did a Godard free-style adaptation of `King Lear' with Woody Allen! In between, she had the unfortunate success of some cheap personality roles. Since then, she's been cruising. Will she come back from the dead? I see she is signed up for Greenaway's next project, `Luper.' He is the most intelligent mind in film today, so that seems promising.

But here, she is background. A shame I say.

Another winner: the sound designer. This has great sound. Fortunately they didn't lard it up with honk-a-glitz so far as the songs -- but the sound is what impressed me.

Ted's evaluation: 2 of 4 -- has some interesting elements.

score /10

tedg 11 October 2002

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0629852/