Friday, May 1, 1998
Screenscene
"He Got Game"
Directed by Spike Lee
Starring Denzel Washington
In spring time – while flowers bloom and young men’s fancies
turn to love – high school seniors have to decide what college to
attend. Remember when you were a senior in high school, facing the
biggest decision of your young life? Remember all of the pressure
you faced? Wasn’t that a tough decision?
Try, then, to fathom the pressure faced by Jesus Shuttlesworth,
the protagonist of Lee’s latest film, "He Got Game." It is time for
Jesus (played by real-life Milwaukee Buck Ray Allen) to pick a
school, and as a standout high school basketball player, the
decision is even more stress-filled. And as the best player ever to
walk the face of the earth, well, it’s just wild.
And that’s not even the half of it for Jesus, who is indeed the
best ever (we see his picture on the cover of Sports Illustrated,
and a piece on him in SportsCenter with quotes from Shaquille
O’Neal and Dick Vitale). Just six days before decision-time, Jesus’
dad Jake (Washington) gets out of jail. Now Jesus has to decide
whether to forgive his father, who murdered Jesus’ mother six years
before. And Jesus still has to decide where to go to school.
Jesus!
Meanwhile, director Lee never decides what elements of this to
focus on. Sometimes, this is a movie about the beauty of
basketball, with lots of close-up, slow-motion shots of jumpers
sailing toward the basket. Sometimes, it attempts to be a movie
about Jake – the murderer who turns out to be the nicest guy in the
picture, as everyone else eyes Jesus’ money. And Lee stretches the
plot still further in giving both Jesus and Jake love
interests.
But these all amount to distractions in what ultimately is a
movie about the stresses faced by 18-year-old prospects, like
Jesus. All of his acquaintances want a piece of his future
earnings. He is bribed, begged to and seduced by agents, coaches
and women. One coach even holds his hand to pray, "Dear Lord.
Please deliver Jesus to us."
You’d think Jesus would have a nervous breakdown, but the
solution to his problems lies elsewhere. After all, this, among
other things, is a basketball movie, and eventually, Jesus and his
dad have to play some one-on-one.
Mark Dittmer
Grade: C
"Les Miserables"
Directed by Bille August
Starring Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush, Uma Thurman and Claire
Danes
It was bound to happen. Full of drama, romance and epic
settings, Victor Hugo’s "Les Miserables" was bound to be made into
a major motion picture. And in trying to fit a thousand plus pages
into a little over two hours, Bille August’s film adaptation isn’t
exactly a carbon copy of the musical-theater inspiring work. It’s
more like a two-year-old’s sketch of the Mona Lisa.
In this latest film version of Hugo’s literary classic, an
onslaught of big name actors give generally decent performances.
But there are enough little character and plot changes to transform
a potential epic human drama into a feel-good Hollywood movie.
The first half of the film is actually quite accurate, as the
audience witnesses Jean Valjean’s (Neeson) transformation from
convict to mayor. In fact, the film devotes quite a large portion
of the film to the first couple hundred pages of the novel,
carefully setting up the conflict between Valjean and Javert
(Rush), the meticulous policeman who is obsessed in capturing
Valjean.
As the movie progresses though, things become more and more
detached from original story. The memorable gems in the book are
lost to snappier, laughter-inducing scenes. Valjean and "daughter"
Cosette’s touching initial encounter in the dark is lost. The
tragedy of the sympathetic and wretched Eponine is not to be found
and neither is Marius’ lengthy quiet and subtle courtship of
Cosette.
But absences aside, the changes are more disturbing. Dane’s
feisty and somewhat annoying portrayal of the older Cosette lacks
the silent delicate grace needed. And instead of revealing his
identity and Cosette’s history on his death bed, Valjean is forced
to tell all in a overly dramatic yet surprisingly anticlimatic
scene, culminating in Cosette yelling, "Who are you?"
Yet, close comparison and scrutiny aside, the film is entirely
watchable. Strong performances and an inherently interesting plot
make for an entertaining experience.
The brightest one of the stars though is certainly Rush. While
the film itself pushes Rush toward a stereotypical two-dimensional
performance, the Academy Award-winning actor manages to convey a
certain amount of depth in the role of the misunderstood
antagonist.
But this is Hollywood, so they won’t wade deeper. Besides, no
one has the balls to kill Neeson. So instead adaptations are made.
Javert’s somewhat weak and tragic escape through suicide is molded
into a somewhat heroic and respectable act, in an
everything-is-nicely-tied-up kind of scene where he releases
Valjean. And so as the music swells, the wind billows through
Neeson’s hair, his coat flutters, the doves fly overhead, the
audience is sitting amidst the popcorn smiling. Feeling good about
mankind, feeling good about themselves and feeling a little … oh
… fuzzy.
Stephanie Sheh
Grade: B-
"Dancer, Texas Pop. 81"
Directed by Tim McCanlies
Starring Breckin Meyer, Peter Facinelli, Ethan Embry and Eddie
Mills
A title which contains important information is a good start,
but its even better that among the 81 we find a group of good young
actors – Meyer, Facinelli, Mills and especially Embry, who’s always
a charmer with his signature dorkiness ("Empire Records," "That
Thing You Do").
They play four best friends and since childhood they’ve made a
pack to leave their small town of Dancer and shoot for Los Angeles
once they graduate from high school. But when that time comes,
three of them back out, leaving poor Keller (Meyer) the only dancer
without a partner.
But Keller just has to leave, and so the movie’s drippy score
begins to play, always on cue, further embarrassing those already
mawkish blatherings about growing up and tackling the big
world.
In many ways "Dancer" is refreshing, a modest and honest
do-gooder in a filmmaking era of pretentious bullies. Yes, it’s a
marvel that this type of movie can still be made these days, a
movie so audacious with its dramatic pablum- – there’s a certain
feel of cultural vengeance to the film’s unmitigating
sentimentality – as if the filmmakers purposely wanted to shock and
molest our jaded ’90s sensibility with their story’s golly-gee
wholesomeness. It’s an interesting intention of the filmmakers
which makes for an interesting indictment against our movie-going
generation, but that discussion is perhaps better left for
post-postmodern scholars to consider.
For our needs, "Dancer" works best if we render it to the same
vacuum of a Countrytime lemonade commercial: girls on swings, wild
mustangs, rustic horizons, hunky-dory Newton Boys lit by campfire.
Apparently, it’s also a vacuum where parents with resources never
consider sending their sons to college, where hip and accessible
cities like Austin or San Antonio are never mentioned as
compromises and, get this, where we’re supposed to sympathize with
a dying oil drilling industry.
Whether or not it’s autobiographical (though writer-director
McCanlies is a fifth generation Texan now living in Los Angeles),
"Dancer" is still a kind of movie that only an autobiographer could
fully love: a therapeutic and sometimes shamelessly indulgent
memoir to himself, complete with the idle pace of goo-goo-eyed
reminiscing. But surely others will be able to embrace it as well,
mostly because of the four talented and incidentally photogenic
stars (thank heaven for little girls).
Tommy Nguyen
Grade:B
Denzel Washington (left) plays Jake who tries to convince his
estranged son Jesus (Ray Allen) to accept a basketball
scholarship.