I really love Reeve, but perhaps the director of "Bug" and the nearly worthless "Jaws 2" should have passed on this. Both parties seem to have been in this project to save themselves from typecasting (it's a cinch Reeves was all through the early '80s - see "The Bostonians" and "Monsignor"). Only 2.5 scenes work at all in this poorly directed and hammy exercise in the mechanics of tear-jerking.
The scene that is pulled off halfway is the first, marred only by a pretentiousness that points to something spooky going on. The first thing that clued me into the fact that the film was going to be more painful than I guessed was very small, but noticeable, and mistakes like it happened constantly throughout the entire movie. A camera pans through an apartment we know belongs to Reeves, simply from having seen movies before. Something that Szwarc doesn't get at all is that 95% of those in the audience are smart enough to figure anything out because all their lives they have ingested moving images and know their language subliminally. But this early pan, which I believe happens right after the opening credits, pauses on a group of objects so that the dumbest rock in the seats can recognize them from the prologue, and say - "oh, this must be Reeve's place."
Those type of directing decisions are made all along, and come in varying degrees. I'm shocked that Szwarc directed Bruce the Tempermental Mechanical Shark at all, because in this very simple production, he can't even seem to stage a simple two-shot without doing something obtrusive or allowing something stagey to seep into the lense. This goes from the large to the small - in one scene, Seymour recognizes Reeves from about 100 yards below and behind where he is sitting. I thought this unlikely, but was then treated to a shot from her point of view (considerably removed from her position forward via the camera set-up), and there was NO WAY Reeves' own mother would have recognized him in that shot. All you see is a shoulder and part of his head - and that all obscured by woodwork and bushes. A smaller gripe comes from the strange and even lazy-seeming inclusion of a shot between Plummer and Reeves on a gazebo in which a moth suddenly flies up from under the camera and cuts a wacky line between the actors before flying away. Why was that take even printed, and how did it make it into the final cut? Szwarc was not reaching for verisimilitude, that's for sure - everything in this movie is so stagey and polished like a tv movie that I can't see how the moth was allowed to upstage the actors.
Enough. The sad part about this is the utterly foul performance by Mr. Reeve, NO DOUBT pushed in all the wrong directions by the director. Many of the really bad moments are straight from the direction. In the beginning, we see Reeves in his office, obviously frustrated about something. Then he sits at a desk and proceeds to do every little thing a high school thespian would do: he picks up the phone, holds it, then hangs up. He sighs, leans back, purses lips, then suddenly rips a page out of his typewriter and gets up. Ugh.
The worst moments of all - the ones that made me cover me face with a couch pillow because I was embarrassed for him - come when Reeves is called upon to do anything out of the ordinary, like act nervous, talk to himself, mince around being a wiseguy, or do anything other than stand still expressionless. And for trying to shed the Superman image, there is a leaden moment in this movie where he does the Clark Kent schtick without any disguises. That made me cringe almost as bad as the moment where he does an impersonation of an uppercrust snob to entertain Seymour. Double-ugh.
I know I've really gone after this movie with a hammer, but before I say something good about it, one more thing... The character Reeve plays is very unlikely to begin with. An educated, successful playwright who seems to forget everything about theater when he goes back in time. Also, I find it incredible that what appears to be an incredible delusional psychosis crushing this man makes for anything like a fun time at the movies. I thought it was funny/sad the way this man suddenly goes mad, wandering around like a zombie and even goes off by himself on a 'trip.' Then the silly clothes and all the talking to himself and all the ridiculous things he says with a straight face. I found no motivation for his sudden departure for the island where his 'adventure' takes place (and watch the shot where he stops at the 'Y' in the road and decides to go left - as good an example of bad acting as anything in Corman). The film is trying to drop him into an obsession, like Dreyfuss and the mashed potatos in "Close Encounters," but you never grasp a reason why, other than he needs to go from point A to point B in order to service the plot. Szwarc believed endless shots of a camera-conscious Reeve staring at pictures would do the job - hardly! All you can think of is that if you knew someone who was acting like that, you'd want them on medication, pronto.
Aside from all that, the film has two good moments. The best scene comes along near the end, where the two leads are eating on the floor of their room. This is the only scene in this 104 minute movie that plays like anything out of a more accomplished film. There is a well staged and edited series of shots near the end of the scene that have seemed to appear out of a film that is not so obnoxiously innocuous. The other good moment resides in the last three shots, which have been done before and since ("Titanic"), but still work magic that shouldn't have appeared in something this drecky.
In the end, this movie accomplishes something incredible, in that it makes "Love Story" seem on the level of "Potemkin."
The scene that is pulled off halfway is the first, marred only by a pretentiousness that points to something spooky going on. The first thing that clued me into the fact that the film was going to be more painful than I guessed was very small, but noticeable, and mistakes like it happened constantly throughout the entire movie. A camera pans through an apartment we know belongs to Reeves, simply from having seen movies before. Something that Szwarc doesn't get at all is that 95% of those in the audience are smart enough to figure anything out because all their lives they have ingested moving images and know their language subliminally. But this early pan, which I believe happens right after the opening credits, pauses on a group of objects so that the dumbest rock in the seats can recognize them from the prologue, and say - "oh, this must be Reeve's place."
Those type of directing decisions are made all along, and come in varying degrees. I'm shocked that Szwarc directed Bruce the Tempermental Mechanical Shark at all, because in this very simple production, he can't even seem to stage a simple two-shot without doing something obtrusive or allowing something stagey to seep into the lense. This goes from the large to the small - in one scene, Seymour recognizes Reeves from about 100 yards below and behind where he is sitting. I thought this unlikely, but was then treated to a shot from her point of view (considerably removed from her position forward via the camera set-up), and there was NO WAY Reeves' own mother would have recognized him in that shot. All you see is a shoulder and part of his head - and that all obscured by woodwork and bushes. A smaller gripe comes from the strange and even lazy-seeming inclusion of a shot between Plummer and Reeves on a gazebo in which a moth suddenly flies up from under the camera and cuts a wacky line between the actors before flying away. Why was that take even printed, and how did it make it into the final cut? Szwarc was not reaching for verisimilitude, that's for sure - everything in this movie is so stagey and polished like a tv movie that I can't see how the moth was allowed to upstage the actors.
Enough. The sad part about this is the utterly foul performance by Mr. Reeve, NO DOUBT pushed in all the wrong directions by the director. Many of the really bad moments are straight from the direction. In the beginning, we see Reeves in his office, obviously frustrated about something. Then he sits at a desk and proceeds to do every little thing a high school thespian would do: he picks up the phone, holds it, then hangs up. He sighs, leans back, purses lips, then suddenly rips a page out of his typewriter and gets up. Ugh.
The worst moments of all - the ones that made me cover me face with a couch pillow because I was embarrassed for him - come when Reeves is called upon to do anything out of the ordinary, like act nervous, talk to himself, mince around being a wiseguy, or do anything other than stand still expressionless. And for trying to shed the Superman image, there is a leaden moment in this movie where he does the Clark Kent schtick without any disguises. That made me cringe almost as bad as the moment where he does an impersonation of an uppercrust snob to entertain Seymour. Double-ugh.
I know I've really gone after this movie with a hammer, but before I say something good about it, one more thing... The character Reeve plays is very unlikely to begin with. An educated, successful playwright who seems to forget everything about theater when he goes back in time. Also, I find it incredible that what appears to be an incredible delusional psychosis crushing this man makes for anything like a fun time at the movies. I thought it was funny/sad the way this man suddenly goes mad, wandering around like a zombie and even goes off by himself on a 'trip.' Then the silly clothes and all the talking to himself and all the ridiculous things he says with a straight face. I found no motivation for his sudden departure for the island where his 'adventure' takes place (and watch the shot where he stops at the 'Y' in the road and decides to go left - as good an example of bad acting as anything in Corman). The film is trying to drop him into an obsession, like Dreyfuss and the mashed potatos in "Close Encounters," but you never grasp a reason why, other than he needs to go from point A to point B in order to service the plot. Szwarc believed endless shots of a camera-conscious Reeve staring at pictures would do the job - hardly! All you can think of is that if you knew someone who was acting like that, you'd want them on medication, pronto.
Aside from all that, the film has two good moments. The best scene comes along near the end, where the two leads are eating on the floor of their room. This is the only scene in this 104 minute movie that plays like anything out of a more accomplished film. There is a well staged and edited series of shots near the end of the scene that have seemed to appear out of a film that is not so obnoxiously innocuous. The other good moment resides in the last three shots, which have been done before and since ("Titanic"), but still work magic that shouldn't have appeared in something this drecky.
In the end, this movie accomplishes something incredible, in that it makes "Love Story" seem on the level of "Potemkin."