Movie Review Because I Said So

Because I Said So (2007) 

Directed by Michael Lehmann 

Written by Jessie Nelson

Starring Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore, Gabriel Macht, Tom Everett Scott, Lauren Graham, Piper Perabo

Release Date December 2nd, 2006 

Published December 2nd, 2006 

In my nearly seven years writing film criticism I have seen some awful movies. Rarely however, have I seen something as brutal as the new romantic comedy Because I Said So starring Diane Keaton. It's not that the film is as badly made as say, Deuce Bigelow, or as poorly acted as the indie feature Undiscovered. No, what makes Because I Said So so notably awful is the cast.

How does a movie starring the legendary Diane Keaton, the lovable Mandy Moore and the reliable Lauren Graham, end up this brutally awful? That is a notable achievement, taking three beloved actors and forcing them into a movie so insufferable that even their innate appeal is dimmed by how terrible this movie is. That director Michael Lehmann once directed Heathers, a legit cult classic, makes this epic misfire so much more of a mystery. Then again, Lehmann also directed Hudson Hawk. Hmm.

In Because I Said So Diane Keaton plays Daphne, a mother of three beautiful daughters who, on the verge of turning 60, has just one wish. Daphne wants to find a man for her youngest daughter, Millie (Mandy Moore). To this end, Daphne commits herself to the task of finding Millie's ideal man by creating an online dating ad for her and then interviewing potential candidates herself. The search leads to a nice guy architect named Josh (Tom Everett Scott) who mom absolutely loves. Also in the running is a nice guy guitar player named Johnny (Gabriel Macht) who mom doesn't so much like but is Millie's perfect type.

If you need a road map to figure which guy Millie ends up with you have either never seen a movie before or have lived your entire life in a cave; cut off from logic. Because I Said So is not merely predictable, predictability I could forgive. No, Because I Said So is such a trainwreck of romantic comedy cliches and artificial roadblocks that it becomes unbearable to watch this cast enact such sub-sitcom levels of convoluted comic idiocy. 

Diane Keaton is a legend. She has won the Oscar for best actress. She has even made a few very bad movies, First Wives Club, Hanging Up, to name a few. But, she has never been this awful in a movie. Her performance in Because I Said So is an epic disaster of over the top gesticulations, shrill dialogue delivery and logic free character development. As a director herself, it's a wonder how Keaton did not see this character going so badly. Or maybe she did. There is a good ten minute sequence in the film in which Keaton doesn't say a word. I can't prove this, but I like to think this was Keaton's silent protest of the movie. I can hope, can't I?

Because I Said So doesn't just slime the great Ms. Keaton, it nearly destroys the career of Mandy Moore. The former pop star had come a very long way in her acting career since her ugly debut in the weepy teen romance A Walk To Remember. She was terrific in a bitchy supporting role in Saved, charming in a bitchy role in American Dreamz, and utterly darling in her cameo on TV's Scrubs. Sadly and unfortunately in Because I Said So, Moore looks like a novice actress, tripping over punchlines and allowing the movie to make her look like a fool in nearly every scene. 

Moore should find some way to sue director Michael Lehmann for allowing her to appear so utterly befuddled onscreen. This is a career low-point that would be difficult to recover from for the veteran Diane Keaton. For Ms. Moore, she may have to look to a TV career before considering film again. Lauren Graham of TV's Gilmore Girls and Piper Perabo of Coyote Ugly round out what is, on paper, a stellar cast. How you make a movie this awful with this cast is truly astonishing. Both Graham and Perabo are thanking their lucky stars that their roles barely rise above cameos.

How bad is Because I Said So? Here is just a hint of what this movie believes is funny. Two scenes of Diane Keaton watching internet porn. Two scenes of Ms. Keaton, legs in the air screaming to the heavens, a dog humping furniture. Some of the most stilted and awkward sex talk in the history of film. Not one, but two all family sing alongs. And, because the family runs a catering business, 3 scenes of people covered in cake.

Now, I can hear skeptics out there reading along and thinking 'of course he doesn't like this movie, it's a chick flick'. Allow me to explain how this works. I loved The Holiday, I loved Love Actually and I gave a glowing recommendation to the movie The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. This is not about genre, or target audience. This is about Because I Said So being one of the worst movies I have ever seen.

In the words of the great Roger Ebert, from the title of one of his great books, I hated, hated, hated, hated, hated this movie. Because I Said So is a painfully awful, nightmare of a movie that poor Diane Keaton may never recover from. She is lucky that she was once in Annie Hall and won a very deserved Academy award for Best Actress because otherwise it would be very easy to write her off after a disaster like this.

As it stands, I'm sure Diane Keaton will be back. Let's just hope she fires her agent before he allows her to make another movie remotely as awful as Because I Said So.

Movie Review: Road to Perdition

Road to Perdition (2002) 

Directed by Sam Mendes 

Written by David Self 

Starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Tyler Hoechlin, Jude Law, Daniel Craig

Release Date July 12th, 2002 

Published July 11th, 2002 

Tom Hanks is the ultimate affable good guy, in many ways he's the essence of the everyman. The party animal from Bachelor Party, the doofus cross dresser from Bosom Buddies, and the ultimate noble good guy, Forrest Gump. It is this reputation that made Road To Perdition so special. In Perdition, Hanks portrays a cold hearted mob assassin seeking revenge. It is a stretch, because he's Tom Hanks but a man with two Oscars under his belt never lacks for confidence.

In Road To Perdition, Hank's is Michael Sullivan, a hitman for the Rock Island branch of Al Capone's Chicago Mob. Paul Newman is John Rooney, Sullivan's boss, a man who is like a father to Michael. That dynamic changes dramatically  when a 'business' meeting goes bad. Rooney's actual son, played by Daniel Craig, kills a mob associate unexpectedly and the hit is witnessed by Michael's son, Michael Jr, played by Tyler Hoechlin. Unwilling to let his son be caught by either the cops or the mob, John Rooney turns on Michael and decides to have Michael and Michael Jr killed. 

Also on the Sullivan's’ trail is a hitman named Harlan "the Reporter" Maguire (Jude Law). Maguire is called The Reporter because after he kills someone he photographs the body and sells the picture to the newspapers. It's a great gimmick, a well fleshed out bit of detail that Jude Law clearly relishes. Law is wildly charismatic and you can sense how much he enjoyed playing this character in Road to Perdition. It's a delicious supporting role, superbly played. 

Road To Perdition has a strong narrative, hard boiled dialogue, and, of course, the acting is first rate. Especially good is the legendary Paul Newman as the pragmatic mob boss forced to choose between his son and his adopted son. Newman gives two flawless monologues that should net him an Academy Award nomination, if not a win. Hanks made his Oscar reservations the day he signed onto the picture. Hanks never trades on his persona. For Hanks, Michael Sullivan is a challengingly different role and he makes it look easy. With any icy stare and everyman look he transforms into a surprisingly menacing version of himself.

Director Sam Mendes, who won the Academy Award for his first picture American Beauty, beats the sophomore jinx with an amazing depiction of real life violence and it's consequence. It's about the bonds of family and especially fatherhood. As Newman's character explains "Sons were put on this earth to trouble their fathers". Of course Conrad L. Hall does yet another spectacular job. His cinematography is damn near flawless, especially at the film’s moving climax.

If I had any problem with the film it was the feeling of inevitability. Every action by every character seems as if it were written in stone long before it happened. This inevitability makes the film a little predictable. Also, the films ending, while very moving, lacks the catharsis the audience desperately needs. Still, you can go ahead and pencil in Road To Perdition on your fantasy Oscar ballot.

Movie Review Gods and Generals

Gods and Generals (2003) 

Directed by Ronald F. Maxwell 

Written by Ronald F. Maxwell 

Starring Robert Duvall, Stephen Lang, Jeff Daniels, Mira Sorvino, Frankie Faison

Release Date February 21st, 2003 

Published February 20th, 2003 

The Civil War isn't quite the blockbuster story that popcorn-loving audiences seek out in search of escapist fare. So I must credit Ted Turner and the makers of Gods & Generals for attempting such a bold, non-commercial effort. That said, at well over three hours in length and with a decidedly pro-South approach, Gods & Generals is not only non-commercial, it's non-watchable.

A dramatic retelling of the Battle of Fredericksburg, Gods & Generals stars Stephen Lang as Southern Colonel Stonewall Jackson and Robert Duvall as General Robert E. Lee. On the Northern side it's Jeff Daniels reprising his role from Gettysburg as Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, though since Fredericksburg is chronologically before Gettysburg, Chamberlain has just joined the Maine contingent of the Northern army on his way to becoming a Colonel. Duvall inherited the role of Robert E. Lee from Martin Sheen who held the role in Gettysburg. 

Of course I'm getting well ahead of myself. Gods & Generals details the beginning of a three part film series that again actually began with it's middle segment, Gettysburg, in 1993. This first installment is about how Virginia was drawn into the war on the side of the South. Representatives of President Lincoln offered General Robert E. Lee the command of all Northern armies to fight the secessionist South. Feeling sympathy for the South's states rights stance Lee declined and began to organize a Virginia regiment to fight on the side of the South. A Virginia Military Institute professor, Thomas Jackson, whose students are quick to join in, also joins Lee. Jackson joins up telling friends that his priorities are God, family, Virginia and country.

Looking for a quick end to the war, President Lincoln is prepared to fight Lee's Virginia troops and the supporting armies from the South in Fredericksburg, with the feeling that without Virginia, the South would fall quickly. Sensing a moral imperative to the end of slavery and reuniting of the country, a philosophy professor from Maine named Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain joined the Northern army over the objection of his wife Fanny (Mira Sorvino, in a cameo role). Chamberlain is joined by his less idealistic brother Thomas (C. Thomas Howell), who doesn't believe in the cause as much as he believes in helping his brother.

Those are the recognizable characters, but like the classic Hollywood epics of the 1930's and 40's, there really is a cast of thousands. Thousands of actors and committed Civil War re-enactors came together under the direction of Ronald F. Maxwell, who also directed Gettysburg, to recreate The Battle of Fredericksburg with nearly flawless detail. From strategy to historic legend, right down to the costuming, Gods & Generals is as faithful as a movie could be to it's subject matter.

The accuracy and precision involved in the recreation of the battle is truly commendable. Unfortunately, all that surrounds it is snooze inducing. Speech after speech after speech drone on and on and on. When Lang, Duvall or Daniels isn't on screen, it's nearly impossible to tell the Northern and Southern armies apart, even as the recreation of the battle is extraordinarily detailed . In the awesome confusion of muskets and cannon fire, telling them apart becomes an entirely futile and exhausting effort and audiences are left out of the film until after the battle when the major characters are back upfront explaining who won the day and why.

That confusion however isn't the film’s biggest problem. The biggest problem is the script, which paints the army from Virginia as the noblest army ever to walk on to a battlefield. To watch Gods & Generals as pure history would lead one to believe that Stonewall Jackson was a combination of Superman and Ghandi. That's not to criticize Stephen Lang, who has a few very effective scenes. It would be difficult for any actor to portray Stonewall Jackson as the second coming of Christ but he does the best he can with the role. We can argue forever, and historians have, why the Civil War was fought, but in the end neither side could live up to the way they are portrayed in the script, written by the director Ronald Maxwell.

The film’s length at just under 7,200 hours is deathly. Actually it was just under 4 hours but it feels a lot longer. Though the battle scenes may hold your attention, the scenes that don't include massive explosions are tremendously dull and filled with pious speeches from characters that Maxwell seems to want to put up for sainthood. I don't mind long movies, I own the nearly five hour versions of Lord Of The Rings and Apocalypse Now Redux, but Gods & Generals has some obvious segments that even junior editors could easily clip out without hurting the film’s narrative in the least. One less interminable speech by Stonewall Jackson about God's judgment and the film would be half as long. 

What Gods and Generals needs more than anything iss an editor, a good one. An editor who could reign in the visionary director and hip him to the necessity for brevity in modern cinema. Gods and Generals would play better as a television movie, broken up over two or three days. There, the commitment to accuracy could be appreciated more while not taxing the backside of everyone watching it.