I can't be more interested in this story than the people who made a movie about it

MBunge

Based on the true story of a guy who passed himself off as famed directed Stanley Kubrick in London in the late 1990s, taking full advantage of everyone's generous hospitality to the cinema legend, Color Me Kubrick demonstrates two things. One is the difference between a comedian and a comic actor. The other is the subtler the humor, the more it needs to be grounded in realistic observations of human existence. Those two things prevent this film from rising about the merely okay.

Alan Conway (John Malkovich) is the aforementioned impostor. He's middle aged, beardless, dresses like a homeless man who fell into the donation bin outside a Goodwill store and knows very little about Kubrick. None of which stops person after person from believing his claims. I'm not sure how it worked in real life, but here Alan persists in the deception until he gets what he wants or has to flee from being found out. With people unwilling to testify in court to being such willing dupes, Alan may have been able to carry out his scam for as long as Kubrick was alive. Unfortunately for him, he tried to pretend in front of the New York Times' Frank Rich and that led to him being publicly revealed. But losing the con that was his life turns out to be just another opportunity for Mr. Conway.

I was never bored watching this movie and it's not badly made to any degree. I also didn't laugh once during the whole thing, though smiles were frequent, and it didn't leave me with any sense of who Alan Conway was, why he did what he did or any desire to find out those answers for myself. That's because Color Me Kubrick is one of those comedies that's more wry than funny and I don't think the people who made it were more than superficially interested in those answers.

John Malkovich has done enough comedy by now that it's no surprise to see how good he can be at it. I would say this film shows him to be more a great actor who can comedy or drama, rather than a great comedian. His performance here, with the different accents and personalities he gives Alan's pretense, is excellent but limited by the somewhat shallow nature of the material. Malkovich can't make something funnier here than it was on the page, where here it clearly wasn't that funny in the first place. The vast majority of this motion picture is the same blunted punch lines over and over again.

1. Look how silly Malkovich is acting!

2. Look how gullible these people are to believe this guy is Kubrick!

Which gets at the fundamental deficiency in this production. Neither writer Anthony Frewin nor director Brian W. Cook appear to care a whit why Alan does what he does or why he's able to get away with it. I don't get the sense from this movie that either of them spent even 30 seconds talking to any of the people conned by the real Alan or any of the people who knew Alan as Alan in real life. These filmmakers were certainly amused by how Alan fooled so many or else they never would have bothered with this story. However, I don't think they were interested in it as anything more than dull-witted mockery of people the filmmakers think aren't as clever or sophisticated as they are. Every single victim of Alan's, except one, is dumbly entranced by the lure of celebrity in the same way. The one exception is a psychiatrist who's even more addlebrained than that.

If you like Malkovich, especially when he's funny, you might find Color Me Kubrick passable. There's nothing here for anyone else.

score 4/10

MBunge 20 July 2012

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2645782/