This is one of the few movies given the green light during these troubled times. I guess because it’s being billed as heartwarming and touching and all that. But actually, one of its main ingredients is that the FBI is after a guy. Now that’s scary, isn’t it? Even scarier, this movie is based on a Stephen King book. But don’t worry, King now writes many heartwarming stories of childhood and this is one of them.
In fact I felt I was watching “Stand By Me” all over again as the movie quickly heads towards a 1960 setting and is centered on three carefree kids living in a small town. The fact that we’re not in Maine made me understand there won’t be a boogeyman because Stephen King seems to only release the demons when his characters are stuck living in Maine. Anyway, our main character kid is Bobby Garfield and he lives with his Mom and hangs out with his two best friends, Carol and John. The kid has just turned eleven but the story is told in flashback, so we actually open the movie up years later when Bobby gets some news that brings him back to his old hometown and the memories flood from there.
Entering the picture very quickly is a guy by the name of Ted Brautigan, played by Anthony Hopkins. And he’s a strange one all right. He rents the upstairs of Bobby’s house and strikes up a relationship with the kid. At about this point I started to get real bored. Ted is full of writers’ quotes and some of his own homespun wisdom and that seems to be about it. Things like “your first kiss is the one by which all your others will be measured and they’ll always be found wanting”, or something like that. He’s also big on saying “and wishing will not make it so”. Okay, given that the guy is some kind of psychic I could expect him to be a bit off. But the mystic act wears on you. Does this guy say anything else besides the wise spiritual stuff?
But the kid hangs in there. I think when I was eleven if I met a guy like this, I’d either fall asleep or run away but this kid takes it all in. I guess it’s because his Dad has died and his Mom is much removed from his life. The kid who plays Bobby, and his name is Anton Yelchin, does a fair job of it, although like all kid actors I get bothered by the same “tone” form of acting they do. One voice pitch, one acting style. Remember “Bobby” from the “Brady Bunch”? Now you should get the idea. In fact, this kid has a crush on his friend Carol and it was a little like watching Bobby Brady hit on Jan Brady.
Through all of this, strangely enough, probably the most interesting character to watch is the Mom, played by Hope Davis. She’s a great meld of a repressed 1950’s housewife and a selfish, “I want it all” present day Mom. She’s sharp enough to find there’s something strange about this Ted guy and his hanging out with little kids, but she’s too self absorbed to realize she’s facing her own set of dangers. I guess it isn’t saying much for this movie if she’s the one I found myself drawn to, but that’s the way it went for me.
“Hearts in Atlantis” has a pretty good finish as the last half hour teaches everybody valuable life lessons and they’re not too soppy. But I had hoped to be drawn in more by the story and the characters. I wasn’t, and as Ted would say “and wishing will not make it so”, and so it didn’t. I give the movie a “5.0”.
Friday, September 21st, 2001
So now I know everything in the movie world is really back to normal. When I entered the theatre to see this show, I was the entire audience. By the time the movie started, I think there were five of us. Look, the only major release they put out today is a Mariah Carey movie. That should tell you all you need to know. In light of all that’s happened these past ten days, do we really care if she recovers from her “breakdown”? I’m sorry, I would like nothing more than to rip her new movie, but I couldn’t bring myself to go see it.
That left this baseball movie. Billed as “The Bad News Bears” meets “Boys In The Hood”. Okay, fine. I guess it was sort of like that. Keanu Reeves plays Connor O’Neil, and it’s apparent rather quickly he’s got problems. Drinking problems, gambling problems. It’s not pretty. He’s in debt, he’s beaten up, he even beats himself up. So to work his way out of debt, he takes on a paying job coaching an inner city boys baseball team. They’re called the Kekambas. All the teams in the league have the African names. The kids come from bad homes and they’re badly behaved. I’m sure you could have figured that out. Do they turn around into a pretty good team? Well, that’s not the point.
The point apparently is that they turn around Connor’s life. The idea is that suddenly his problems seem small when he sees what this kids face every day. Drive-by shootings, getting beaten up. You get it I’m sure. Do I sound bored here? Well, it actually plays out better than I’ve described it, but expect no surprises. I appreciated the fact that not every point is hammered home so solidly. And it’s interesting that these kids play better ball without any teaching from Connor, except he tells them to stop using the “bitch” word.
Keanu does make something out of this role. He plays it “dazed and confused” just about the whole way and that’s good because he’s supposed to be a mess. Sometimes you really can’t tell if he’s going to give up or keep plugging, even though you really do know. As for the kids, well, of course, underneath it all they are really precocious little darlings, but they had to be. The movie goes back and forth being politically correct and then non-politically correct and maybe that’s as close to the truth as we can expect. There are nasty people and there are good- hearted people and Connor is changed by them all. So who am I to quibble?I’m even willing to forgive some of the lyrics to the team’s theme song.It’s a rap tune and one part goes something like ” I’m looking to meet the lady that’s going to have my baby”. Pretty advanced for ten year olds to be singing. You’d have to be pretty heartless not to be moved a bit by the goings-on in “Hardball”. I give it a “6.0”. I’m in a charitable mood. It at least spared me from that Mariah Carey movie.
Friday, September 7th, 2001
Ever dreamed of being a star and then became one? All right, what song is that from? Never mind. This is a movie about a rock band’s fan who gets a chance to take over as the lead singer. Mark Wahlberg plays Chris Cole, a copy machine repairman living near Pittsburgh. It’s somewhere around 1984 and Chris spends all of his spare time devoting himself to the hit metal band known as “Steel Dragon”. He has his own cover band to imitate the group. Well, I should say, as Chris says, a tribute band. His girlfriend, Emily, played by Jennifer Aniston, manages the band and they’re a hit locally.
Everything about the opening forty-five or so minutes of this movie impressed me. Some movies do that. The sets, the costumes, the little bit of acting and writing I get to see early on can put me in just the right mood. This one did that. It feels like 1984. I forgot just how big these metal bands were back then. Think about it- Def Leppard, INXS, Bon Jovi, Poison, Van Halen. I could go on and on. John and I occasionally like to talk about how bad Top 40 music was in the early 80’s. Remember Air Supply? How about Kenny Rogers? Ronnie Milsap? Need I say more? These metal groups filled a music vacuum. And thank God for that.
But back to the movie. I loved the first half. The wide-eyed young guy living at home with the dead end job getting his only hoots out of life by pretending to be the rock star. Perfectly portrayed here. Notice too, how his parents aren’t cardboard cut-outs from all the other movies like this going back to “Saturday Night Fever”. Rather than being verbally abusive alcoholics, they support the kid and treat him lovingly. What a pleasant surprise.
So now Chris gets to be the lead singer for “Steel Dragon” and things still move along quite nicely. He’s now known as “Izzy” and I guess, at this point, you know what’s coming. With rock and roll, comes sex and drugs. What will happen to the Chris from the small town who was really into the music and not the lifestyle? What will happen to Emily? They actually handle this quite well, addressing things like what would any guy do if he had easy access to women and drugs and alcohol? Let’s just say that things are skipped over here a bit, but we get the idea pretty much from a scene that depicts the aftermath of an all night orgy. By the way, a gossip column reports that Mark Wahlberg has three, yes, three nipples. So, take a look if you must.
I kind of dozed off a bit about two-thirds of the way through “Rock Star” because it slows up a bit as Chris makes his way through the concert tours. I don’t mean to be too critical here because I do like this movie. The basic themes are “be careful what you wish for” and “be true to yourself”, but despite those clichés, this movie manages not to be corny or stupid or both. There’s also some good stuff about what these metal band groups have to be, image wise, to sustain their young male audience. It doesn’t excuse their overdosing on sex and drugs, but it helps you to better understand it.
“Rock Star” sets out to tell a fairy tale and does it quite well. I give it an “8.0” on the scale, but deduct a point if you can’t stand to hear much of that screechy metal music of the 80’s all over again.
