I
think we might be asking too much of our movie-going audience. After a summer
full of arthouse films disguised as blockbusters, Hollywood thought they could
sneak Punch-Drunk Love in the back
door without anyone noticing that Adam Sandler didn’t do any of his crazy
voices or sing “The Chanukah
Song” in it. I recently had the distinct displeasure of standing near the
exit of a theater showing Love, and
was treated to the moronic comments of mouth-breathers who thought they were
going to see The Waterboy 2:
“Dude,
what the fuck was that?”
“I
don’t know. The only funny part was when he smashed that glass door
thing.”
Now we’re asking the very same
dunderheads to swallow Solaris, which re-teams the creative
talent that brought us Ocean’s 11 (namely, director Steven Soderbergh and star George Clooney):
“Hey,
Jeff — those Ocean’s 11 guys made a
new movie.”
“Mmmm…
Ocean’s 11 good.”
“We
get meat first.”
“Mmmm…
meat good.”
[This is most likely followed by a
high-five or, possibly, a chest bumping.]
But don’t expect Ocean’s 11. Don’t expect a sci-fi
thriller. Don’t expect Solaris to be
like anything Soderbergh has ever done. And, thankfully, don’t expect it to be
nearly three hours long, which was the running time of the first screen version
of Stanislaw Lem’s novel when the Russians made it back in 1972 (it won two
awards at Cannes and is one of the oldest cult hits you’ve never heard of).
Soderbergh, who gets the first screenwriting credit he’s received on a film
he’s directed since 1983’s King of the
Hill, whittles the essence of Lem’s story down to a running time that’s
much more ass-friendly.
Solaris begins at an unspecified time in the distant future, where Chris Kelvin
(Clooney) attends support group meetings to deal with the grief of losing his
wife Rheya (Natascha McElhone). He looks sad, mentally beaten and, with his
quickly graying temples, more than a little like Robert Forster. One day, Chris
gets a crazy message from an acquaintance named Gibarian (Ulrich Tukur), who is
running a mission exploring a distant planet called Solaris from the spacecraft
Prometheus. Gibarian says he wants Chris to join him on the Prometheus, but never
really says why. “Amazing things are happening here,” he crows.
When Chris concludes the long
journey to the Prometheus, he discovers a bunch of bloody handprints and two
corpses as soon as he boards the ship. One of the stiffs is the decidedly
less-enthusiastic Gibarian. The only two remaining members of the crew — Snow
(Jeremy Davies) and Gordon (Viola Davis) — talk in the same kind of spooky
riddles Gibarian used in his message to Chris. Hoping things might make more
sense after some quality shut-eye, Chris hits the sheets and has a dream about
his late wife. When he wakes up, she’s right there in bed with him — as alive
as she can be.
This all happens within the first
half-hour, and telling you any more of the plot might ruin the story. I will
warn you that you’ll need to bring your brain. There’s a lot more going on in Solaris than Clooney baring his ass (it
looks like he’s wearing a black thong — he’s one hairy fella). That whole
flap over the MPAA and Clooney’s posterior seems like it was drummed up just to
get the film some publicity. Since the word of mouth(breathing) won’t be
strong, Fox wants as many people as possible to see Solaris during its first weekend. It’s too bad some people won’t
take a chance on the film, which features Clooney’s best performance to date
(by far) and a turn by McElhone that I like better and better the more I think
about it (she’s really playing four different roles here).
For Jeff and his buddy, the
beautiful and beautifully made Solaris will put the “mal” in minimalism. With long stretches containing no
dialogue, it’s a slow, sterile, meditative, thought-provoking film that will
leave many unanswered questions rattling around in your head (other than
“Dude, you wanna go to Taco Bell?”). It will make you think about
your own existence. It will make you re-examine The Big Picture. Or, if you’re
just not into films with non-linear narratives that don’t spell everything out,
maybe it will make you want to kick in a glass door thing.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island has already been adapted
for the screen over a dozen times, starring everyone from Lon Chaney and Boris
Karloff, to Orson Welles and Charlton Heston, to Kermit the Frog and the guy
who played Mel on Alice. Now it’s
back again, but with two special updates: The story has been transplanted to
the space age, and it’s appearing in the super-duper IMAX format, in addition
to regular theaters (this is actually the first time the same film has been
released in both 35mm and 70mm formats simultaneously). Neither modernization
should have you or your kids clamoring to see Treasure Planet, but it
provides safe and decent family entertainment for parents too scared of this
week’s other animated film (Adam
Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights).
Planet takes place in the distant future on a non-Earth-type world. Like the unpopular
but very entertaining Fox television show Firefly,
the characters act like they’re living around the beginning of the 20th
century, even though they fly around in spaceships and stuff. Our protagonist
is young Jim Hawkins, who we meet as he reads a 3D book about a bloodthirsty
pirate named Captain Flint and his hidden plunder, which is referred to as
“the loot of a thousand worlds.” Flash
forward 12 years, where Jim (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is now an
earring-wearing, probation-enjoying, rat-tailed, windsurfing, skateboarding,
free-falling kind of kid with big eyebrows (thick like Denise Richards; not
bushy, like Andy Rooney). His father abandoned the family, leaving Jim’s
miserable mom to work a thankless job at a local restaurant. Jim doesn’t care
about getting into trouble, because he thinks his future is shot.
Enter Billy Bones, who crashes near
Jim’s house and, before dropping dead, gives the kid an orb and warns him about
a dangerous cyborg who has been trying to relieve him of it. The orb, of
course, reveals the location of the planet where Captain Flint hid his booty so
many years ago. Together with the financial help of a nerdy
astrophysicist/restaurant patron named Dr. Doppler (David Hyde Pierce), Jim is
able to commission a ship to fly to the titular treasure planet. While the foxy
captain (Emma Thompson) and Thing-look-alike first mate (Roscoe Lee Browne)
seem like a professional duo, the rest of the crew seem a bit shady. Especially
the one-eyed, one-handed, one-legged cook (Brian Murphy), who goes by the name
John Silver (naturally, his seafood preparation is quite dazzling).
What follows is a typical trip that
resembles The Goonies as much as it
does Stevenson’s novel (dig the name of the ship: the RLS Legacy — a tribute
to the author). Well, “typical” other than the Silver character —
he’s either the best-developed Disney villain of all-time, or a total cop-out,
because he never gets punished for any of the bad shit he does. Some of the
visuals are stunning, like when what we think is just a regular old crescent
moon turns out to be a spaceport, and a supernova-turned-black-hole. But when
compared to a Shrek or a Monsters, Inc., Planet just doesn’t cut it.
Interested
in unsanitized movie ramblings from Jon? Visit his site, Planet Sick-Boy, at
www.sick-boy.com, or listen to him on WBER’s Friday Morning Show.
This article appears in Nov 27 – Dec 3, 2002.
