Friday, 5/30/97 SCREENSCENE SCREENSCENE: "Rough Magic" and
"Buddy"
"Rough Magic" Directed by Clare Peploe Starring Bridget Fonda,
Russell Crowe Genre splicing is one of those artistic feats many
are drawn to try but most end up going down in flames.
Unfortunately, "Rough Magic" is no exception. Attempting to mix the
stuff of film noir with the always-tricky brew of magic realism,
plus a dollop of screwball farce, "Rough Magic" ends up being a
weak mixture which could only satisfy the thirst of someone
unfamiliar with the ingredients the film draws from. The story, set
in the late ’40s and early ’50s, opens with magician’s assistant
Myra Shumway (Bridget Fonda) chasing bunny rabbits into an elevator
where standing is the dashing though ultimately nefarious
millionaire Cliff Wyatt (D.W. Moffat). Suddenly Myra is engaged to
the millionaire in such a jarring fashion it seems as if a scene
was cut out of the film. After a rather contrived accident, Myra
finds herself on the run from her fiance (see Jacques Tourneur’s
noir masterpiece "Out of the Past" for a brilliant riff on this
plot line) and winds up in Mexico. British actor Jim Broadbent
plays a snake-oil salesman in Mexico on the trail of a miracle
elixir and the Mayan shaman who has the recipe. Enter Alex Ross, a
standard issue, almost caricature noir hero (he’s got the stubble,
the dark look in his eyes and he’s haunted by the nightmarish
memories of Hiroshima and World War II) that actor Russell Crowe
manages to breathe some life into. The gumshoe is hired by Wyatt to
find Myra, and when they meet, they begin trading barbs and verbal
dueling, which means that underneath the animosity, the two
actually are kind of sweet on each other. The dialogue tries hard
to evoke the zippy patter of the past. Crowe’s Ross (his very name
a nod to noir scribe Ross MacDonald) even takes to calling Myra
"Slim," the same nickname Bogey gave Bacall in Howard Hawks’ "To
Have and Have Not." Fonda is not without her charms, but if you’ve
seen Bogey and Bacall in action, the invocation of "Slim" only
reminds you how great they are and how Crowe and Fonda come up
short. As Myra and Ross bond, the salesman finds the sought-after
shaman, undergoes a spiritual journey and returns to the land of
the living performing miracles using Old World magic instead of the
weaker illusionist variety. Myra eventually returns to the States,
brokenhearted, when she learns that Ross is a hired goon. What
ensues is farcical and tiresome, running low on laughs and sure to
wear out its welcome long before the predictably unpredictable
finish. Director/co-writer Peploe appears to have some wit and
skill, and hopefully she will find material that’s meatier. "Rough
Magic" may charm some, and surely it’ll strike others as nice
entertainment. But if you know any of the films this film was
spawned from, you’ll find this elixir painfully weak, and it’s sure
to leave you wanting. Grade: C Brandon Wilson "Buddy" Directed by
Caroline Thompson Starring Rene Russo, Robbie Coltrane One of the
hardest lessons for a mother to learn is that her child is all
grown up and doesn’t need her anymore. Unfortunately, for Rene
Russo, in her newest film, the fuzzy, sentimental, dangerously
close to nauseating "Buddy," her child is an 800-pound gorilla. In
the first film from the Jim Henson Production company, "Buddy"
tells the true life story of Trudy Lintz, an eccentric 1920s
socialite who decides to turn her sprawling estate into a zoo for a
wide variety of animals. Her "children" include geese, kittens,
horses, dogs and four little chimpanzees who dress up like
children. Lintz, along with her husband (Coltrane, of "Goldeneye")
and assistant Dick (Alan Cumming, of "Circle of Friends") lives in
a fantasy world where she thinks that by treating animals as if
they were human beings, they will indeed act like them. While this
might work for adorable tiny chimps, this doesn’t necessarily work
for gorillas, a mistake that Lintz realizes when she adopts a
sickly baby gorilla. Naming the gorilla "Buddy," Lintz dresses him
up in cute little outfits, teaches him to eat at the table, and
basically how to behave like a little child. Someone should have
told Lintz that gorillas are not human beings and that they grow
really big. Really really big. So when the gorilla grows up to be
twice the size of her and seven times her weight, Lintz sadly
realizes that her "Buddy" doesn’t belong with humans and is going
to have to live somewhere else. Duh. This new family film will
undoubtedly be an audience-pleaser if the crowd is filled with
children and their parents. It’s another family movie with animals;
it’s got sweet little creatures doing cute little things, a giant
sensitive gorilla, and a kind, gentle heroine in Russo. But for
anyone over the age of 12, the film could send anyone into sugar
shock. The characters in the film are so unbelievably nice and good
to each other that it’s almost sickening. Films that feature an
animal as the main character will always face the problem of having
the animal be endearing enough for the audience. "Babe," a very
good movie that featured mostly animals, was successful because
Babe was charming and sweet. Buddy is not. Sure, the movie tries to
bring out Buddy’s "sensitive side," with his little emotional
breakdowns in the movie, but these bizarre scenes just turn out to
be boring and laughable. Buddy was the wrong animal to focus the
film on. Gorillas are not adorable. The film would have been a
little more watchable if the focus was on the chimps. They were
prettier, smaller and have much more pleasant personalities. But
then again, that has probably been done. Aimee Phan Grade: D
Goldwyn Entertainment Company Bridget Fonda stars as Myra Shumway,
a magician’s assistant on the run in Mexico in Clare Peploe’s
"Rough Magic."