January-1999

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REVIEWS
HURLYBURLY i^irm
Starring Sean Penn, Kevin Spacey and
Robin Wright Penn. Directed by Anthony
Drazan. Written by David Rabe. Produced
by Anthony Drazan, Richard N. Gladstein
and David Hamburger. Drama. A Fine
Line release. Rated R for constant drug
use, pervasive strong language and sexual
material. Running time: 122 min.
This slice-of-life drama has passed its sellby
date. David Rabe's play dug into a particularly
unpleasant comer of a high-low-life
mentality, flourishing and floundering in Hollywood,
as it might any place where the stmggle
for power is raw and naked. On stage, the
machinations of this nasty bunch of wannabes
provided actors a chance to chew the scenery
in ways which seemed clever and immediately
exciting. On screen, a different approach
is needed to obtain that visceral
impact—and it hasn't been found.
Rabe's adaptation of his play seems selfindulgent
rather than searing and the performers
too steeped in the exploration of
their own skills. This heart rage and mind
trip material doesn't benefit from the move
to the screen. It's trite in style and content.
The camera adds a deadening layer, even to
the compelling screen presence of Sean
Penn, whose performance commands our
respect, but never quite grabs our guts. So
as critical observers rather than emotional
participants, we are left to see these cruelly
self-absorbed life abusers as not worthy of
sympathy and, frankly, extremely boring.
Penn' s talent still blazes forth. His depiction
of Eddie, the most fully complex of
Rabe' s creations, is always linked to a foundation
of truth and underlit by a consciousness
of a morality the desperate man's
behavior defies. Anna Paquin portrays the
drifter girl, toyed with by misaligned males,
with an easy surety. The rest of the cast
members aren't so on the nose. Chazz Palminteri
indulges in the majority of the most
obvious scenery chewing, and Meg Ryan
flounders in a role completely unsuited to
her charms. Bridget Byrne
SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE iAr^^1/2
Starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph
Fiennes and Geoffrey Rush. Directed by
John Madden. Written by Marc Norman
and Tom Stoppard.
Produced by David
Parfttt, Donna Gigliotti, Harvey Weinstein,
Edward Zwick and Marc Norman. A
Miramax release. Romance/Comedy. Rated
Rfor sexuality. Running time: 122 min.
Set amidst the grime and grandeur of
Elizabethan England, "Shakespeare in
Love" is an inspired re-imagining of history
and a deft look at the relationship between
art and life. Young Will Shakespeare
("Elizabeth's" Joseph Fiennes) is under
commission from Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey
Rush, also of "Elizabeth") to write a
comedy, "Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's
Daughter." Unfortunately, Will has a
writer's block he cannot conquer—until he
finds his muse and true love in Viola de
Lesseps ("Sliding Doors'" Gwyneth Paltrow).
Viola eagerly returns Will's love, but
the Earl of Wessex ("The English Patient' s"
Colin Firth) has claimed Viola as his bride,
and the marriage cannot be stopped once the
queen has given her consent. As reality
closes in on the lovers, life is transmuted
into art, and Will's comedy becomes instead
the tragedy of "Romeo and Juliet."
Fiennes and Paltrow make a pleasant,
though not distinctive, pair. Surrounding
them are some of Britain's finest character
players, who happily prove the saying that
there are no small parts, only small actors.
Crowning them all, as the wily Elizabeth I,
is Judi Dench ("Mrs. Brown"), calmly stealing
every scene she's in. But the real star is
the script. It wears its scholarship casually,
almost disguising how well researched and
structured it is, preferring instead to delight
us with joyful witticisms and adroit plot
twists.
Oddly, though, the film is, by turns, a
romance and a comedy, but it doesn't quite
achieve the buoyancy and cohesion of a
"romantic comedy," and its darker moments,
as well as its overly dramatic score,
sit uneasily alongside its bawdy boisterousness.
However, this wobble in tone resolves
itself in time for a sparkling climax that
celebrates the glories of the theatre—an
ending of which the Bard himself would no
doubt approve. L. J. Strom
PSYCHO ^
Starring Vince Vaughn, JuUanne Moore,
Viggo Mortensen, William H. Macy and
Anne Heche. Directed by Gus Van Sant.
Written by Joseph Stefano. Produced by
Brian Grazer and Gus Van Sant. A Universal
release. Rated Rfor violence and sexuality/nudity.
Running time: 104 min.
It's not so much that this movie didn't
need to be made. The real tragedy is that a
group of enormously talented people
wasted several months of their lives when
together they could have done something
fresh and exciting and original.
Instead, director Gus Van Sant ("Good
Will Hunting") has done a shot-by-shot
remake of the 1960 Hitchcock film, and
it has all the artistic integrity of that paintby-numbers
Mona Lisa that your grandmother
has hanging on the wall of her
family room.
Film students might compare this "Psycho"
to the original and perhaps see where
Van Sant used a faster lens and got more
depth of field. They might even figure out
how it comes in five minutes less than before.
But so what? As a stand-alone movie
it falls flat on its face.
Not only is the live action close to identical
but the titles by Saul Bass and music
by Bernard Herrmann are there too. In fact,
the only thing arguably better is the sound.
The music, adapted by Danny Elfman,
takes full advantage of the improved technology,
and the voices in Norman's head
are terrific when digitized and blasted at
you from odd angles.
But if Van Sant had a burning desire to
see "Psycho" in color, he would have been
better off borrowing Ted Turner's paint box
and splashing it on Hitchcock's black-andwhite
classic. Mike Kerrigan
BABE: PIG IN THE CITY
^^1/2
James
Starring Magda Szubanski,
Cromwell, Mary Stein, Mickey Rooney
and the voices of E.G. Daily and Steven
Wright. Directed by George Miller. Written
by George Miller, Judy Morris and
Marie Lamprell. Produced by George
Miller, Doug Mitchell and Bill Miller. A
Universal release. Adventure/Fantasy.
Rated G. Running time: 96 min.
A bizarre, confused smorgasbord of ideas
and concepts that often seem as lost as the
film's star, "Babe: Pig in the City" suffers
from a perennial Hollywood malady: the
misguided belief that more is always better
the second time around. Indeed, the new
film has more of just about everything:
more animals, more chase scenes, more locations,
more jokes, more jeopardy and
more people. More of everything, in fact,
except charm.
Picking up immediately where the first
film left off, the sequel finds Farmer
Hoggett (James Cromwell) sidelined by an
accident and unable to tend to the farm.
Threatened with the farm's repossession,
Mrs. Hoggett (Magda Szubanski) and Babe
set out to the city to collect an "appearance
fee" at a fair, but a series of mishaps strands
them in a strange, generic "City" where
their adventures are escalated by even
greater mishaps. Once again a "pig out of
water," Babe is forced to rise to the occasion
and come to the rescue, forming an unlikely
alliance of dogs, cats and trained simians to
save both Mrs. Hoggett and the farm.
The original "Babe," of course, had the
element of surprise to its advantage. It came
with no stars, no hype and no expectations.
Audiences responded to its freshness and
uniqueness. "Babe: Pig in the City," on the
other hand, is virtually hamstrung by expectations,
its makers over-anxiously and selfconsciously
trying just a little too hard to
one-up what the first film did with such
effortless innocence.
Essentially little more than a series of
chaotic, disjointed set pieces, each more
outlandish than the last, the film also suffers
from the heavy-handed style of director
George Miller. A co-writer and co-producer
on both the original "Babe" and the sequel,
Miller nonetheless seems an odd choice to
duplicate the delicate touch of "Babe" director
Chris Noonan. As a director. Miller
is best known for the kinetic intensity of the
"Mad Max" series, "Lorenzo's Oil" and
"The Witches of Eastwick." It comes as
little surprise, then, that much of "Babe: Pig
in the City" begins to look like Miller's
previous work, with the finale torn almost
verbatim from "Mad Max Beyond
Thunderdome."
Any such criticism, however, hinges
strictly on the film's failure to measure up
to the original, which in some respects may
be unfair. For while "Babe: Pig in the City '
likely won't score many points with adults,
there remains more than enough to keep
children anxiously engaged and entertained.
Unfortunately, in an already
crowded family film season, that may not
be enough.— Wade Major